Rather 'telling' imo the people who want free speech at ANY cost are the ones throwing insults.Go figure

Nicely put Joey, there are levels of crime, of course someone who calls someone else a dickhead on a forum shouldn't be prosecuted but a person who actually goes out of their way to cause distress, who knows what else is going on in their sick minds and when fantasy will play out into reality. A few short sharp examples won't go amiss, just like this one, and yes it probably is a waste of police time and resources but then where do we draw the line, do we ignore anti social behaviour on our streets, who is calling for resources to be pulled from that particular crime?

A Twitter troll who delighted in the fatal stabbing of teacher Ann Maguire has been jailed for eight weeks.

In the wake of Mrs Maguire's death, Robert Riley bragged to his followers he would not just have killed Mrs Maguire but "all the bastard teachers" at Corpus Christi School in Leeds.

The jobless 42-year-old from Cwmavon, Port Talbot, also posted a series of racist tweets claiming Nazi death camp Auschwitz was a "health spa" and suggesting that Muslim babies should be drowned.

Despite a Twitter backlash, Riley, who used the handle @johnriley001, initially revelled in his new found notoriety, boasting that he had the "biggest gob this side of the River Severn".

However, the ex-junkie cut a more forlorn figure when appeared before Swansea magistrates today.

After pleading guilty to one charge of sending a grossly offensive message via a public communications network, Riley begged for leniency.

However, chairwoman of the bench Georgina Scannell voiced her disgust and said she was left with no choice but to send the defendant straight to jail.

We cannot stop people from thinking whatever filth their diseased minds happen to conjure up. In the past these lunatics could remain unseen and unheard harming no one in reality. but now thanks to the Internet and social media sites like FB and Twitter they can spread their vile hatespeech and cause grave offence to other people.

So the crime here is the ease with which they can spread their poison to many many other people, this is the area that we need to address. We must make technology cleverer which in turn makes people more accountable for their inputs. Filters and barriers and new forms of monitoring must be developed which to a degree stop this type of hatespeech or at least limit it's reach.

I don't have the answer and there are no easy fixes as Internet censorship is not the answer and freedom of speech must be protected at all costs.

Maybe having deranged individuals spouting this type of hate filled vitriol is a sad price we have to pay.

Yes we must and while we are waiting for this to happen I think it is up to each individual to assess the level of reporting they are comfortable with. Who knows maybe Denise contacted Twitter and they suggested under the circumstance involving the police we don't know the full story here.

Interesting that this person was prosecuted and convicted and imprisoned for his hateful words yet as we are seeing not everyone is prosecuted by the police for this type of hatespeech.

So my question is........who decides what is abhorrent enough to constitute actual prosecution by the police ?

where is the bar set, is it speech that is racist,sexist,religious hatred, ageist ?

Is it only hatespeech that makes it to the national press or pricks the conscience of the nation ie a topical news story.

Who decides.

Is this not the situation in every court room though, who decides what punishment enough? are we not always talking about how lenient some sentences are? and how OTT others seem in comparision, this is the system we have, these twitter arrests may not be isolated cases, some will make the headlines I'm sure there are many more that we don't hear about just like any other crime.

How do you know it's not capable of policing itself? You're making judgements from fringe incidents and the worst possible scenarios like they are common occurrences. The Media highlights stories like this to make them seem more common than they actually are. These trolls blow hot air on the internet because they can but ultimately that's all it is.

I play a game called League of Legends and it's an online game where you are put into teams with other players and it's the most toxic game I've ever played. It's rare to find a game where there isn't at least one person spouting venom at the rest of their team or at the enemy. Over my time playing that game I've been told to die of cancer, that I should be raped and have my throat slit afterwards and that the same thing should happen to any kids I may have, tonnes of really awful stuff. Would I ever consider going to the police over any of it? No because that's a waste of time and every one of these players was easily dealt with by muting them and reporting them after the game.

Online abuse can only affect you if you let it. Of course issues of Cyber Bullying can be different since it's more often than not related to real life, Cyber Bullies are often people you know in real life.

That is your choice you know by involving yourself in this game that the atmosphere may be toxic and they are not referencing any specifics in your life just your random everyday rape threats :umm2:

I would also add,real life is NOT a game.

Personally I think that general one off abusive comments thrown at people should only be dealt with by twitter. People have nasty comments thrown at them all the time be it in the playground or workplace, no it's not nice but that's life unfortunately and at least online you can block the person and try to forget about it.

However, it's when people go to the extent of making accounts dedicated entirely to abusing someone, such as in the case in the OP, or the abuse is continuous, that I think it becomes a problem and should be dealt with by the police... though only if the victim is genuinely distressed by it, and reports the issue themselves. We're all different, we can't all cope with things the same. Person A might have a nasty account made about them and be able to easily block it and move on, whilst person B might be so distressed that they harm themselves or kill themselves over it. Extreme? No, it happens sometimes. Two people at my college killed themselves a few months ago over cyber bullying. Sure, it was done by people they know as opposed to a stranger as is the case in the OP, but the premise was the same as people made fake accounts about them too and it shows how we're not all super strong and can easily cope with things by blocking it out of our lives.

If anything, the guy in the OP is clearly a horrible person so regardless of whether people think his arrest was justified not, some time in jail wouldn't do him any harm I think!

You could say the exact same thing for Twitter. Abuse can be random and impersonal and abuse from people comes with the territory of being a celebrity or a notable person. it occured before Twitter and it's not nothing new except that it's easier to stop it online.

Online abuse and abuse in real life is not the same, if someone was up in your face in real life you'd be hard pressed to simply turn the other cheek but the opposite is true online. The most simple and easiest thing you can do to prevent abuse online is to block and report the abusers. Anything else is counter productive and time consuming in comparison.

I'd also agree with this. When I think of free speech I think of people having the right to voice their political opinions, to speak out against news stories, to be able to live their lives comfortably without fear of prosecution. I don't think of the local yob harassing a poor woman whose son was killed and being able to easily get away with it.

They are both online platforms with social elements. The fact that one is focused around a game doesn't really make much of a difference if the potential abuse an average person could receive is the same.

Isn't it difficult for the Bulger family or any family with a media profile to identify who are just trolls and who are people they know though? who is a threat and who isn't?

It was a twitter account pretending to be a ghost, it obviously wasn't a threat to the family's safety, Completely moronic and vile? yes but not something that should have been handled by the police.

It's fairly easy to tell which are the real threats and which are trolls. From what I understand of this twitter account there were no threats delivered, just cruel jokes.

We don't know what threats the family have received in the past though. I can't blame the Bulger family for reacting the way they have in this situation.

If we don't know then we can't use it as an argument for or against so discussing possibilities is useless for both sides.

The article doesn't mention if the family got the police involved, from the sounds of things the mother acknowledged the abuse and then ignored it and the police intervention came from the attention it received.

The mother has the right idea about meeting with the Twitter execs, you can't expect the police to get involved in every online dispute. Twitter must police itself.

I don't think anyone on this thread has advocated for the police getting involved in EVERY Twitter dispute, but there are some which the moderators are not equipped to deal with and shouldn't be expected to either.

Those incidents are incredibly rare, like I've said since early on in the topic, the police should only get involved if there's an actual serious threat involved. Getting involved with this troll was just a way of scoring some good press for the police with the easily led and could have easily been dealt with by an Admin. It was just needless.

I agree, but it's knowing where to draw the line from ignore to inform the police. There is no set of rules which the Administrators/Moderators can use as a go by. Each case has to be judged on it's own unique nastiness and perhaps the degree or depths the person has gone to, to cause such abuse to other individuals.

It's not needless if it makes idiots think twice, in fact it is money well spent.

This man was clearly looking for attention and perhaps infamy and he got it. This will not put off trolls... Because they are LOOKING for that reaction. It will only encourage them.

The worst outcome for this man would be to have to been ignored completely.

But people will never learn, they will continue to whip up hysteria, and the tabloid press will continue to lap it up. Do you think that the gutter rag journalists are "outraged" by this man's actions? I highly doubt it, it's delicious fodder for the slobbering hounds that want a little child murder gossip to go with their morning coffee.

The Bulger case has been an undignified media circus for well over a decade. A tabloid horror story, by now verging on national folklore. Are we really surprised that things like this happen? The real horror of what happened to that boy was lost in a cloud of pop culture gore years ago. Along with poor Maddie, and countless others. You can blame the papers and the crass public who adore tragedy for the reality disconnect that affects these "trolls". Until we sort out THAT cesspool, there will be a never ending parade and incidents like this. There are a million other trolls where this guy came from.

it,s certainly NOT folklore for the people involved.

Actually I would agree with you totally with that Cherie.

Thanks Joey