Freedom To Speak, Or Freedom To Hate?

Should you have the right to say anything you want, even if it’s hateful? Was Twitter right in Banning Milo Yiannopoulos?

- Koh Wanzi

There was anger. There was also hate, the pungent whiff of racism, and a light sprinkling of misogynistic vitriol. And then the ban hammer came down. In July, Twitter banned Milo Yiannopoulos, a technology editor at conservative news site Breitbart and the self styled “most fabulous super villain on the internet.”

His crime? Allegedly directing a torrent of hate and insults toward Ghostbusters co-star Leslie Jones, courtesy of his rabid followers and other like-minded folks on Twitter.

Unsurprisingly, Yiannopoulos trumpeted the ban as a victory for him, saying that this was “the beginning of the end for Twitter,” supposedly because of the implications the ban had for free speech.