I don't know if this has been shown anywhere outside of Australia but recently an Australian celebrity, Charlotte Dawson was attacked on Twitter leading to an attempted suicide. Rugby League player Robbie Farrah was also attacked on Twitter, mostly abuse about his mother who passed away from cancer earlier this year. There have now been lots of calls to identify trolls who use the internet to abuse people and charge them for their crimes. I'm personally all for it, however I don't know how hard it would be to make sure you get the right person, but there has been a lots of people arguing that this is messing with everybody's freedom of speech and that you should be able to say whatever you want online. So what do you think, should people forward abusive tweets/facebook etc comments to the police to get them charged?
Freedom of speech and anonymity are separate matters in all but a few areas. If you live in a police state, then anonymity and freedom of speech may go hand in hand. If you actually have freedom of speech, then you don't need to be anonymous. You should probably accept that saying what you want, when you want will have consequences though.
Yes. Just because it's online, it doesn't mean those words are less harmful. The anonymity of the internet shouldn't be used to abuse another human being. A recent example is the horrendous abuse some Olympic athletes had to face after their performance. A tragic incident as a direct result from online bullying was the suicide of a teen aged girl after she was viciously abused on the web by her neighbors masquerading as a boy interested in her. These things are unacceptable. Why is it that hate speech is still protected in the U.S.? Is the senseless hatred of another human being based purely on bigoted stereotypes acceptable? Are we so ignorant that we cannot differentiate between a genuine expression of freedom and bigotry? Freedom isn't the right to do anything, that's what we're defining this as, but the right to do anything that doesn't cause any form of harm to another human being. Bullying in all its forms, and hate speech are clearly harmful. Protecting online bullies' behavior is only encouraging it to continue unabated. Would you allow a child to be continuously bullied to the brink of suicide in order to "protect" a bully's right to express him/herself by harming the child? It is essentially the same thing.
Agreed^. It's all very well people trotting out the 'right to free speech' thing, but with rights come responsibilities and in this sort of thing the responsibility is not to abuse online posting and use it for the purposes of bullying someone else. It's becoming a huge issue in schools at the moment. My mum works with special needs kids, mostly kids who've been sick, been bullied, have Asperger's Syndrome type issues, many of whom have missed lots of school and many of whom have suffered bullying via social media. The schools seem unwilling or unable to tackle these things and often accept the claims of the bullies that 'it was just a bit of fun'. It is completely unacceptable that these obnoxious people should be getting away with this sort of behaviour just because they did it on Facebook. They should have their accounts deleted and, in the worst cases, they should be prosecuted.
Just curious what everyone thinks about the incident with Tom Daly, someone sent me this article when it was in the headlines. http://azizonomics.com/2012/08/01/thoughtcrime-is-real/
Calling it "thought crime" is a bit wrong isn't it? Because he typed it out and sent it to someone? I think "malicious communication" is worthy of being a crime. If I sent a letter made from cut out type faces to my neighbours threatening them I'd expect a visit from plod for putting them in fear of their safety. Why should twitter be different?
Malicious communication was originally sending a communication with the intent to cause distress or anxiety. Definitely a crime, and perfectly suitable for the tweet made by that particular twit. Calling it thought crime is just another one of the attempts by people who think that one person's right to be an outspoken, obnoxious little twerp is greater than another person's right not to be harassed and insulted to try and reframe their rather offensive cause.
There's a difference between expressing an opinion that someone else finds offensive and making a statement designed solely to offend.
Especially via twitter because you can include an @ symbol specificaly to target your intended recipient.
Every time someone presses an online send/post button (on twitter, mail, forums etc) there should a warning box that comes up saying "Would you say this if the person was stood in front of you?". If the answer is no then it needs a re-type.
More accurately it should probably be - "Would you bellow this aloud to someone in a public place so that your boss/parents/local policemen/partner/other could hear?" At least in the case of public forums like twitter, facebook and MAP.
It stops becoming "freedom of speech" when it becomes harassment towards a particular person and singling them out. Freedom of speech was for those who can express their opinions of a subject without persecution. Such as Getting messages like (for example) is not freedom of speech. Its harassment. Its malicious communications. A person who deliberately thought out what they wanted to type, typed it, sent it, hoping it would provoke a negative reaction such as distress. I'm all for it, its difficult to do with all the psuedonyms and mobile access' around but with the evolution of society and technology we always find new crimes.
It's inevitable that the law will always be playing catch-up to some degree where new technology is concerned, but I would have though that existing legislation regarding malicious communications would be sufficient to cover any form of online communication too, as LBR referred to. We've seen a few prosecutions already, and no doubt we'll see quite a few more before the penny starts to drop that you can't hide behind online anonymity and expect to get away with harrassment and bullying. The problem is the global nature of t'interweb. If someone in (say) the USA harrasses someone is (say) the UK, then would the UK citizen have recourse to law if US law hasn't been broken? (Obviously if the boot was on the other foot then the Brit would get extradited in a flash, but that's another issue.)
This is a great response to a twitter idiot and I hope it truly happened like this. Beware...much swearing. http://michaelleggesblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/socialnetworkiopath.html
I totally agree with you as thats how it is. Its the "hunting down the suspect" aspect what I was referring to, with every idiot out there with a mobile phone and an account. Anyone can be anywhere making these things. Sure you can certain things and usually these idiots do it in their own homes. The World has gone smaller with the internet but at the same time more secretive. In the example you gave, the location of the victim is technically the location of the offense as that is where the person became a victim. But it would take the efforts of both UK and US Police to bring this person to charge. However its highly unlikely a person would get extradited for malicious communications in the UK. Which also brings to attention of available resources in the Police.
If that happened like it was written it would be epic.. but I doubt it did. (For the record I didn't agree with that Twitter ref Tom Daly, I just thought it would be interesting to add to the conversation) Raz
I agree that in theory there should be some control. However I don't trust that the government won't abuse the law and use it to restrict "real" freedom of speech. I also doubt that it's even possible to do, at least now. They can't stop piracy or child pornography I doubt they can police what people say
For someone willing to put the effort in, it's possible to protect your identity and be anonymous. For some moron on twitter, facebook, e-mail or similar, not so much.
