Leslie Jones: ‘Hate speech and freedom of speech — two different things’

NEW YORK, July 22 (UPI) — Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones told Seth Meyers on Thursday that the Twitter trolls didn’t win.

Jones was the target of criticism and insults on Twitter on July 18, with several followers making negative comments about her Ghostbusters performance. Breitbart tech columnist Milo Yiannopoulos chimed in after she responded with insults and profanity, accusing her of playing the victim and calling her work in the film “terrible.”

After he called her “barely literate” and tweeted “America needs better schools!” she tweeted that she was reporting him to Twitter. Twitter subsequently suspended the columnist’s account.

“What’s scary about the whole thing is that the insults didn’t hurt me,” Jones told Meyers. “What scared me was the injustice of a gang of people jumping against you for such a sick cause.”

“If I hadn’t said anything, no one would have ever known about this,” she said. “It’s so gross and mean and unnecessary.”

“Hate speech and freedom of speech – two different things,” said Jones.

Jones told Meyers that she was able to work with Twitter to get the offending accounts suspended, Yiannopoulous’ permanently.

Yiannopoulous was subsequently banned from Instagram as well, but his account was restored on July 21, Breitbart reported..