Owen Jones quits social media after receiving death threats

Guardian journalist Owen Jones has taken a break from social media after receiving a torrent of abuse.

The journalist wrote on his Facebook page yesterday (March 12) that he would be leaving social media after receiving death threats.

In the statement, Jones wrote that he is “wasting” his life by using social media.

“I find myself constantly engaging with people denouncing my motives while sending abuse. And my friends ask: What are you doing? Why are you wasting your life on this nonsense? And they’re just right.”

“Added with the usual far-right extremists sending ever more creative descriptions of how they’re going to torture and murder me, I’m no longer convinced social media is as useful a tool for political debate and discussion as it once was.”

“I know the obvious response to this. Put your violin away, stop pitying yourself. Get a thick skin. You put your views out there, expect to get attacked. That’s how this works.”

“But to be honest it isn’t about that. I’m just wasting my life. I wouldn’t choose to walk every day into a room full of total strangers screaming mindless abuse and making up what I think and what my motives are, but in a sense that’s what I’m currently doing.”

Jones ended the statement, asking his followers to come together and “build a world far more just than the one we have today.”

H/t: The Gay UK

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