Rapper and one half of Black Star Talib Kweli has been kicked off Twitter due to “repeated violations” of the site’s policies regarding abusive behavior and sharing private information. His removal from the platform comes after a social media dispute between the rapper and activist Maya Moody, who claims that Kweli allegedly harassed and incessantly tweeted at her, sometimes for “12 hours straight.”
“The account has been permanently suspended after repeated violations of the Twitter rules. Twitter’s purpose is to serve the public conversation,” the site explained. “Violence, harassment and other similar types of behavior discourage people from expressing themselves, and ultimately diminish the value of global public conversation. Our rules are to ensure all people can participate in the public conversation freely and safely.”
The incident occurred after Moody responded to a Tweet where Kweli was mentioned in, which listed off rappers that have married Black women. Moody did not mention Kweli specifically during the Tweet, but stated “Literally almost all of them are married to light skinned women but that’s a conversation for another day.”
Moody then shared videos showing many of Kweli’s Tweets at her, which clocked in at over 3 minutes of video. The Grio reports that some of Kweli’s deleted Tweets accused Moody of being a “White supremacist” and stated “I can go for 13 years if you come for my family. Im just getting started.”
Jezebel reports that “photos of Moody’s parents and identifying information was leaked by trolls, various Twitter accounts publicized her stepmother’s salary, and she received death threats and threats of sexual abuse from defenders of Kweli’s.” She addressed this alleged harassment in subsequent statements on social media, stating that her point was to create a dialogue around colorism in the Black community.
Kweli has denied the allegations of harassment, telling Jezebel “I’ve never cyber harassed anyone in my life. I responded, on Twitter, to the lies that Maya posted about me. When you respond to someone who posts lies about you, that is not harassment.”
Photo Credit: Alyssa Fried
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