Jon Weisman says he's leaving the microblogging site "to the racists, anti-Semites and Bernie Bros," opting instead for Facebook.

The amount of hate speech on Twitter has grown too much for one prominent journalist.

Jon Weisman, an editor at The New York Times, said Wednesday that he will abandon the microblogging site as the result of anti-Semitic and other comments. Weisman, the newspaper's deputy Washington editor, announced in a tweet that he "will leave @twitter to the racists, the anti-Semites, the Bernie Bros who attacked women reporters yesterday. Maybe Twitter will rethink."

Instead, Weisman said in another tweet, he will now share his opinions on Facebook, "where at least people need to use their real names and can't hide behind fakery to spread their hate."

Weisman, who is Jewish, has become a frequent target of anti-Semitic tweets. After tweeting an anti-Donald Trump op-ed piece in The Washington Post under the headline "This is how fascism comes to America" in May, Weisman was called "kike" and threatened with being put "in the oven," according to CNN.

Twitter said that while it supports freedom of speech, it does not tolerate hate speech.

"This type of conduct has no place on Twitter and we will continue to tackle this issue head-on, alongside our partners in industry and civil society," a Twitter spokesman said in a statement. "We remain committed to letting the tweets flow. However, there is a clear distinction between freedom of expression and conduct that incites violence and hate."

Harassing and abusive tweets, while not a new occurrence on the social network, have received increased scrutiny in recent years. Robin Williams' death, in August 2014, led some Twitter users to send vicious messages to his daughter, prompting her to delete the app from her phone. In February 2015, writer Lindy West revealed that people had created a Twitter account in the name of her deceased father to make crude comments about her.

Source:
courtesy of CNET

by Steven Musil

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