Rapper Talib Kweli is reportedly suing the website Jezebel for causing him to go into a depression. According to Jezebel, Kweli filed a claim in New York Supreme Court against their parent company G/O Media for a 2020 story titled “Talib Kweli’s Harassment Campaign Shows How Unprotected Black Women Are Online and Off,” which was written by Ashley Reese. Kweli said the story caused “negligent infliction of emotional distress” and a “depression state of loss of appetite, sleeplessness, edgy, anxiety, and discomfort around certain women.”
Jezebel reported, “The piece detailed the then-44-year-old rapper’s social media interactions with and about a then-24-year-old student and activist named Maya Moody—interactions that Twitter found warranted his permanent suspension from the platform.” As BET.com reported in August 2020, Kweli was suspended from Twitter permanently after “repeated violations” of the site’s rules. A report from Jezebel claimed Kweli’s suspension, which was confirmed in a statement from Twitter, stems from his alleged harassment of a 24-year-old activist named Maya Moody, who said the rapper continually tweeted at her, sometimes lasting up to “12 hours straight.” “Violence, harassment and other similar types of behavior discourage people from expressing themselves, and ultimately diminish the value of global public conversation,” Twitter’s statement read. “Our rules are to ensure all people can participate in the public conversation freely and safely.”
Pitchfork also reported Kweli’s account suspension was due to violations of the company’s rules concerning abusive behavior and the sharing of private information. “The account has been permanently suspended after repeated violations of the Twitter rules,” a Twitter Spokesperson stated to Pitchfork in August 2020. “Twitter’s purpose is to serve the public conversation. 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 exchanges between Kweli and Moody can be seen beginning July 9, 2020 when Moody tweeted about Black rappers marrying light-skinned women. In response, Talib responded and suggested he wouldn’t stop unless she apologized or deleted her account. He allegedly posted Moody’s comments and discussed the comments during an IG Live video on July 21, 2020. In a statement to Jezebel at the time, Kweli wrote, “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.” A G/O Media spokesperson released the following statement in reaction to the lawsuit, “Jezebel’s article fairly reported on the controversy which led to the permanent suspension of Talib Kweli’s Twitter account. This suit, filed two years after the story was published, has no merit and the company will be seeking our attorneys fees pursuant to the protections afforded to the press to publish stories about matters of public interest like this one.” Kweli is reportedly asking for $300,000 in damages.
