Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos, Banned From Twitter, Once Supported Twitter Trolling Bans

Social media website Twitter has once again banned Milo Yiannopoulos, the outspoken writer at Breitbart.com. Breitbart is known as a major Republican partisan website named for Andrew Breitbart who ran the website until his untimely death in 2012.

Milo Yiannopoulos is a writer for Breitbart and other internet sites. He is most famous in the US for taking on the cause of “Gamergate” — a reaction by some video gamers against a movement to make games more demographically representative of society.

LATEST SUSPENSION BAN OF MILO

The “permanent suspension” ban from Twitter concerned Milo’s involvement in a case of harassment against Leslie Jones, an actress in movie Ghostbusters and a comedian on TV show Saturday Night Live.

MILO, SELF-DECLARED INTERNET TROLL

Milo Yiannopoulos has over 300,000 followers on Twitter. He is known for being the self-described “dangerous faggot” and “most fabulous supervillain on the internet.” Milo lives to promote himself and “troll” people on the internet — all the while pushing very conservative political views.

SITES ARE FREE TO BAN ANYONE

Social media sites, no matter how important and integrated into society they have become, enjoy “private ownership” rights to ban any user at any time and can do so without explanation or notice, and in total disregard of their own non-binding terms of service. No specific explanation was given for the ban of Milo.

MILO’S RESPONSE TO THE LATEST BAN

In a story by another author at his home website Breitbart, Milo declared: “This is the end for Twitter.”

“With the cowardly suspension of my account, Twitter has confirmed itself as a safe space for Muslim terrorists and Black Lives Matter extremists, but a no-go zone for conservatives.”

“Twitter is holding me responsible for the actions of fans and trolls using the special pretzel logic of the left. Where are the Twitter police when Justin Bieber’s fans cut themselves on his behalf?”

“Like all acts of the totalitarian regressive left, this will blow up in their faces, netting me more adoring fans. We’re winning the culture war, and Twitter just shot themselves in the foot.”

In the meantime, the Twitter population lit up with hashtags #BanNero and #FreeNero to rally in support of the ban or protest against it. @Nero is the Twitter user name for Milo.

BUT MILO SUPPORTED TROLL BANS

In a post at The Kernel in 2012, Milo Yiannopoulos opposed internet trolling and supported banning those who do.

[T]rolls seem not to mind that their real names, and sometimes even their occupations, appear clamped to their vile words. It’s as if a psychological norm is being established whereby comments left online are part of a video game and not real life. It’s as if we’ve all forgotten that there’s a real person on the other end, reading and being hurt by our vitriol. That’s as close to the definition of sociopath as one needs to get for an armchair diagnosis, though of course many other typical sociopathic traits are also being encouraged by social media…

It’s clear that existing hate speech laws are inadequate for the social media era…

So perhaps what’s needed now is a bolder form of censure after all, because the internet is not a universal human right. If people cannot be trusted to treat one another with respect, dignity and consideration, perhaps they deserve to have their online freedoms curtailed… But if the internet, ubiquitous as it now is, proves too dangerous in the hands of the psychologically fragile, perhaps access to it ought to be restricted. We ban drunks from driving because they’re a danger to others. Isn’t it time we did the same to trolls? (bold emphasis added)

But Milo Yiannopoulos became the very troll that he was willing to remove from the internet. The self-described “dangerous faggot” is a huge internet star. At least for now, he has been removed from Twitter, according to his own anti-troll policy.