PC Mag: Banning Milo from Twitter Is a Super Bad Idea

From Sascha Segan writing at PC Mag:

Twitter stepped neatly into Lord of the Shitlords Milo Yiannopolous’s trap this week by permanently banning him from the service, thereby justifying his entire thesis that he is a lone flag carrier for “free speech” being persecuted by powerful forces.

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Although Milo has been involved in nearly every high-profile harassment controversy on the Internet, for some inexplicable reason, Twitter decided to ban him yesterday for supposedly inciting the massive racial harassment of Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones. That reached a fever pitch after trolls apparently faked screenshots of Jones’s Twitter account to make it look like she was tweeting racist and anti-Semitic filth.

Perhaps Milo is responsible for that, but only in the way dry timber is responsible for a forest fire. Banning Milo is like burning a witch and then saying you’ve done something about the plague. It makes him a scapegoat and a high-profile martyr while doing absolutely zero about the broader problem he represents, which is widespread, anonymous, sexist, racist, and anti-Semitic abuse. Like a Mafia don in a friendly, minimum-security prison, Milo will have no problem ordering his legions from exile. In fact, his street cred has now improved.

Read the rest of the story at PC Mag.