“People should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter. But no one deserves to be subjected to targeted abuse online, and our rules prohibit inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others.” That was a statement released by Twitter HQ after the company issued a lifetime ban to one of the Internet’s most notorious trolls, Milo Yiannopoulos. The final straw came earlier this week when the head honcho of hate “bombard Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones with racist and demeaning tweets.” This brings up a few interesting issues. First, as any Internet user knows, this hate speech blankets social media — and increasingly, it invades our other forms of speech, including political. It’s hard to imagine that the impact of such verbal rancor isn’t bleeding from words into sticks and stones. Second, while this abuse is terrible (if you’ve never been on the receiving end, it’s worse than you think), there’s always a risk in silencing voices, even those that make you want to pierce your own eardrums. And I really worry about the optics of drawing a line only when it’s hate speech directed at a celebrity. Third, consider that social media is a magnet for the world’s biggest jerks. And this dude was able to stand out as the biggest jerk of them all. No one can say that Milo didn’t apply himself.