People Who Showered Antigay Slurs on Anderson Cooper Still Spew Hate

It was a historic first when, on Sunday, Anderson Cooper became the first out journalist to moderate a presidential debate. It didn't go unnoticed in the dark corners of social media. Numerous tweets with antigay slurs were directed at Cooper, Nico Lang reported for The Daily Dot. Here's just a small sampling:

Lang documented numerous other homophobic tweets, with slurs, that targeted Cooper. Of the three Twitter handles above, all three remain active and continue to tweet out homophobic and racist messages that include epithets.

Twitter's official policy "prohibits the promotion of hate content, sensitive topics, and violence globally" and applies to "[h]ate speech or advocacy against an individual, organization or protected group based on race, ethnicity, national origin, color, religion, disability, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status or other protected status.Violence or threats of violence against people or animals."

The social media giant is known for being lax in its hate speech ban. Actress and comedian Leslie Jones endured a torrent of racist Twitter abuse this summer -- much of it directed by fame-seeking gay internet troll Milo Yiannopoulos. After a global outcry, Yiannopoulos was banned from the medium. Still, hateful posts proliferate on Twitter and slurs are often unaddressed.

Twitter did acknowledge in August that it's developing software to filter out hate speech, but there has been no announcements from the San Francisco-based company since then. In fact, a new social media platform appealing to the alt-right crowd and promising an open forum for hate is catching steam.