A Marjory Stoneman Douglas student who has helped lead the charge for gun control after 17 of his peers and teachers were gunned down in the Parkland shooting has left Facebook—for a while, at least.
On Twitter, 17-year-old Cameron Kasky shared he’s temporarily ending his Facebook usage after getting lengthy, repetitive death threats from users he described as “National Rifle Association (NRA) cultists.”
“Temporarily got off Facebook because there’s no character count so the death threats from the @NRA cultists are a bit more graphic than those on twitter,” Kasky wrote. “Will be back when I have the time for it. Busy getting my feelings hurt by fellow teenagers at [right-wing blog Breitbart].”
https://twitter.com/cameron_kasky/status/966322146153762817
Kasky is the organizer behind the student-led walkout March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., on March 24. He also penned an impassioned CNN op-ed following the shooting. “I’m just a high school student, and I do not pretend to have all of the answers,” he wrote. “However, even in my position, I can see that there is a desperate need for change—change that starts by folks showing up to the polls and voting all those individuals who are in the back pockets of gun lobbyists out of office.”
Other teen activists and classmates of Kasky have also been targets of online harassment after quickly banding together to push for gun control changes that could have prevented alleged shooter Nikolas Cruz from opening fire at their Florida high school. Most pointedly, right-wing media has fixated on student David Hogg, alleging he’s a California felon in his mid-20s, a “crisis actor” shuttled into Florida paid to push anti-gun legislation, or an FBI plant.
On Wednesday, Twitter announced it’s working to derail “targeted abuse and harassment” toward survivors and activists.