A debate over free speech erupted online after Twitter permanently suspended the account of a well-known conservative pundit.

Breitbart.com reported Tuesday that Twitter had permanently suspended the account of Milo Yiannopoulos. Yiannopoulos is a tech editor for Breitbart.com.

The suspension came after Leslie Jones, one of the stars of the new “Ghostbusters” film, began retweeting some of the racist and hateful comments directed at her online. 

On Monday, the actress and comedian said she had been sent hateful tweets, including tweets featuring racist language and photos of apes. She also said, on Twitter, that she had reported Yiannopoulos', who tweeted under the name @nero, and hoped that his account would be locked.

On Tuesday, Jones announced that she was leaving Twitter "with tears and a very sad heart." She also complained that the company should be doing more to stop the spread of hate.

Later on Tuesday, Breitbart posted a screenshot of an email message Yiannopoulos received, notifying him that his account had been permanently disabled for "repeated violations of the Twitter rules, specifically our rules prohibiting participating in or inciting targeted abuse of individuals." 

After news spread that Yiannopoulos' account was disabled permanently, the hashtag #FreeMilo started to trend on social media.

Some of his supporters said the move was an attack on free speech. Many tweeted their views directly to Jack Dorsey, one of Twitter's co-founders:

Others said Yiannopoulos' account had been shut down because he had written a negative review of the “Ghostbusters” film:

Others complained that the accounts of Twitter users who expressed extreme views were still allowed to function, while Yiannopoulos' had been shut down:

However, others on Twitter argued that Yiannopoulos' supporters were confusing freedom of speech with the company's terms of service:

On Tuesday, Twitter released a statement on upcoming changes it was making to its harassment policy.

"People should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter. But no one deserves to be subjected to targeted abuse online, and our rules prohibit inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others," the statement read.

"Over the past 48 hours in particular, we’ve seen an uptick in the number of accounts violating these policies and have taken enforcement actions against these accounts, ranging from warnings that also require the deletion of Tweets violating our policies to permanent suspension."

“We know many people believe we have not done enough to curb this type of behavior on Twitter. We agree. We are continuing to invest heavily in improving our tools and enforcement systems to better allow us to identify and take faster action on abuse as it’s happening and prevent repeat offenders. We have been in the process of reviewing our hateful conduct policy to prohibit additional types of abusive behavior and allow more types of reporting, with the goal of reducing the burden on the person being targeted. We’ll provide more details on those changes in the coming weeks.”