Rapper Nicki Minaj told her Instagram followers on Wednesday that she will leave Twitter permanently, becoming the latest in a string of celebrities to abandon the site because of harassment. The move comes after Minaj revealed her hesitancy to get the COVID-19 vaccine on Twitter earlier in the week which saw the rapper receive widespread condemnation.
In a series of tweets Monday, the 38-year-old rapper revealed that she would be skipping the Met Gala due to the events COVID-19 measures, attendees were required to provide proof of vaccination and wear a face covering. The rapper revealed that she is waiting to get the vaccine until she felt she "had done enough research," which made waves on Twitter and resulted in swift backlash.
In response, Minaj told her 22 million followers who had yet to get the jab to "pray on it & make sure you're comfortable with ur decision, not bullied."
Minaj later revealed that her Twitter account had been disabled because of her controversial posts, something Twitter denies and that she felt the platform had started to feel “a little scary,” and that she would not be returning.
“I’ll never go back on Twitter because it’s starting to feel a little scary, what’s happening now is that slowly but surely we’re living in those places we used to talk about 20 or 30 years ago. We’ve become that place where you can’t speak for fear of the mob attacking you…” Minaj said on an Instagram live session.
Minaj is hardly the first high-profile user to abandon the platform, earlier this year it was revealed that The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have called rejected the platform after becoming disillusioned by the “hate” they have encountered online. Alec Baldwin left following negative reaction to a joke he made, stating that "Twitter is one-third interesting posts, one-third tedious, uninteresting, puerile nonsense, and then it's one-third, or more maybe, just abject hatred and malice and unpleasantness.” Additionally, Ed Sheeran, Lizzo, and Lorde are amongst the growing list of celebrities to disable their accounts or stop posting personally.
The platform has developed a bad reputation and Twitter CEO JackDorsey admitted the micro-blogging site serves as an easy platform for abuse and harassment. In 2018 Amnesty International labeled the social network as a ‘toxic place for women.’
The company has been working to solve its harassment problem but it might be too late as Twitter growth in the United States has stagnated, according to SocialMediaToday, with users choosing to spend their time on alternative platforms.
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