'Ghostbusters' Star Leslie Jones Fights Back After Racist Attack On Twitter

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- Under a barrage of hateful posts on Twitter,
"Ghostbusters'' star Leslie Jones said she was "in a personal hell'' and urged the social networking service to do more to eradicate abuse.

In a series of posts Monday night, Jones said she had been pummeled with racist tweets, CBS2's Jill Nicolini reported. She retweeted numerous tweets directed at her with pictures of apes.

Jones also brought attention to a dummy account that was set up to impersonate the "Saturday Night Live" star that was was tweeting offensive and inappropriate comments.

Jones said the messages were deeply hurtful and brought her to tears.

Jones called on Twitter to strengthen guidelines and for users to "stop letting the ignorant people be the loud ones.''

"You mean to tell me we can't stop hate. I don't believe that," Jones tweeted.

"I'm not stupid to not know racism exists. And I know it will probably live on way after me," Jones tweeted. "But we have to make people take responsibility."

The recently released "Ghostbusters'' has spawned an unusual amount of vitriol online. Many, however, came to Jones' defense, tweeting under the hashtag #LoveForLeslieJ.

"Cyber bullying is happening to all kind of folks at all ages," digital expert Sree Sreenivasan said. "It is something that is part of our lives today."

A Twitter spokesperson said, "This type of abusive behavior is not permitted on Twitter, and we've taken action on many of the accounts reported to us by both Leslie and others."

Sreenivasan said all platforms are working hard to combat the problem, but it's not easy to fix.

"Anyone can create an account and post things really quickly," Sreenivasan said. "As fast as these companies try to whack a mole and get rid of these trolls, they come back with new forms. That's the problem."

Sreenivasan added celebrities should not engage with these types of trolls.

"My advice would be to not engage with trolls and certainly not to retweet them," he said. "When you retweet them, you're basically endorsing them and sending word out to everybody that this is OK."

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