Twitter arrests
 

Now that the internet is finally starting to be strictly regulated, we're seeing a rise in arrests made regarding comments made on Twitter in this country. On the whole, I think it's a good thing that people are being held accountable for what they post online. I do think, however, it's a bit ridiculous that they're arresting adults for making threats but they're not arresting these properly rabid teenage (or younger) fans of popstars who make far worse threats on a daily basis. GQ received a torrent of abuse for their magazine covers of One Direction recently, specifically a joke they made about Harry Styles saying "he's up all night to get lucky" on the front cover. Threats ranging from castration to bombing - I think it might do something to curb that behaviour if the police started arresting some of these kids. People do not seem to think that their words are accountable to them when they post online. Some of the abuse and bizarre requests celebrities receive is messed up. Maybe I just want to see annoying kids get punished :laugh: but I do think with the stepping up of how the internet is policed, there's scope to chill some of these mental cases out. To tweet "GQ MAGAZINE CAN GO **** THEMSELVES WITH A CHAINSAW UP THEIR ASSHOLE TILL IT MUTILATES THEIR INSIDES" because of "he's up all night to get lucky" is not normal behaviour, in my opinion.


Here's a link to the full article:

http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/enterta...ying-responses

I am glad to see an increase in action taken against people making threats on social media and other sites. Recent events saw people making threats of violence, such as rape towards Stella Creasy and Caroline Criado-Perez over the campaign to get Jane Austen on the £10 note and Mary Beard being told that a bomb would be going off imminently whilst she was at home. Why some people seem to think this is acceptable I have no idea, and I welcome action brought against them. For far too long it has been easy for some to get away with these crimes without fear of reprisal. They would be arrested for making such comments in person or for writing on paper so there is no difference in typing them anywhere on the world wide web. It's unacceptable anywhere and hopefully more direct action will discourage others from such idiotic activity.

I'm in a strange position on internet 'abuse'. Obviously those who make repeated threats directly to another person are guilty of harrassment and threatening behaviour, and should be prosecuted, but take for example someone tweeting in general something like "ugh I wish Vanessa Feltz would die already".

That could be construed as a 'death threat' or trolling or abuse. But it's totally something that shouldn't be prosecuted. In that instance someone would have to search for Vanessa Feltz's name to find it, it's not a direct threat and it's a celebrity person being bitched about in extreme proportion.

And then there's racism and homophobia... again, I don't think these should be punished by law. We cannot truly call ourselves a society built on free speech if we do. I'm all for people reacting to racists and homophobes with outrage and publicity, because that can lead to them losing their jobs and basically ruining their lives which they totally deserve. But criminal prosecution? Nah.

But it's such a thin line online... at what stage does a threat reach harrassment? Three tweets? Five tweets? Tweets over weeks? Months? (I'm of course just dealing with Twitter here, take Facebook to be 'wall posts' or 'messages' instead :p) Some small part of me thinks that harrassment shouldn't be a crime either because if we're going to truly and fully live by free speech then I should, by right, be able to tell people "I want to kill you"... because it's thought, not action. But obviously intimidation and mental abuse is a real phenomenon and I would, as would anyone, report someone to the police if they got too harmful and worrying.

It's just difficult to monitor, really, and especially when those in power are entirely oblivious to how the internet operates.

This is a brilliant post.

It is incredibly hard to know where to draw the line. Is there even a line? Should it be a curve that accounts for non-serious comments? How do you take into account humour and frustration? It seems to fall under the umbrella of trial by media, by virtue of Twitter becoming the fastest form of sharing information...

If I were to tweet Mollie King of the Saturdays "I want you to mother my children!" then is that taken as a compliment? How about if I phrase it "I want to get you pregnant!" - is that a threat? Or "If I were in a room with you right now, I'd want you to mother my children!" - there's a degeneration from casual into threatening there, but none of them are actual threats and all of them convey the same message of "you're attractive and I would like to have a child with you" - but am I even being wholly serious when I say that? Have I actually sat down and thought "I would like to have a child with Mollie King from The Saturdays" and decided to inform her? No, it's just a throwaway comment meant to express just how attractive I think she is.

You could apply that logic to so many different things. Like the GQ article I listed in the OP. Most of those people are attacking GQ because they are so attuned to reading negative press about their idol Harry Styles being sexually active which they do not (want to) believe him to be; and the more they read such press, the more sensitive they become to it and they've gotten to a point where something as trivial as "he's up all night to get lucky" becomes a big deal to a large group of people who are all spurred on by one another. At the heart of it, they are looking out for another human being and defending his honour. In reality, they have just threatened to murder the staff at a magazine publication because they implied that their cover star is promiscuous. That's extreme. Where is the line?

agreed completely :love:

yeah... if :rolleyes:

I've stopped tweeting celebrities bizarre crap :laugh2:

Any serious direct threat of harm should only have to happen once. (i.e. I will kill you). I do get that things can be said in jest but I suppose if somebody repeatedly posts threatening messages then it obviously isn't a joke, especially to somebody they don't know personally.

People have been arrested for years because of things they've done on twitter. Leon Knight had his collar felt last year because of his #slagalert thing where he encouraged people to send him pics that girlfriends/casual encounters had sent them, so that he could 'shame' them by showing them to all of his followers. I don't think that was the first time either.

What annoys me is how they've arrested this guy for bothering a politician, but the people responsible for the girls suicide through last.fm are apparently untraceable. Which quite frankly, is bollocks.

They can try all they like but they will never, ever, ever fully regulate the internet. It's impossible.

What they should do is make it so that nobody under 18 is allowed to use it by themselves. Anybody found doing so, will have their parents/guardians brought to book.

One of the biggest problems I have with people being prosecuted for things they've said on Twitter is it isn't consistent and most of the people that are prosecuted have been at the centre of a media frenzy stirred up by the usual tabloids and so the only reason the police have decided to take action is to make themselves look better and as if they're doing something about it. That in itself is totally unfair because if you're going to prosecute one person for a racist joke on Twitter (that's another thing...there's been so many pathetic examples where quite frankly I think it's laughable it's been made out to be a criminal offence), then what about all the death threats to celebrities, millions of jokes retweeted and reposted from the likes of Sickipedia, general insults, etc etc? You couldn't possibly prosecute everyone so it seems pretty unfair to me to single out people who've been the centre of some exaggerated media campaign in order make out this kind of stuff is being dealt with when in reality it's not.

I felt sorry for that girl who was in some kind of youth councellor position who then had to quit because the media trawled up some comments she'd made two years previously on Facebook... that was pretty low. Are we now living in an age where we are accountable for everything we have ever said and are judged by everything we have ever said? Seems like it...

Yes we are. Which is why I am amazed at some of the images and videos people put of themselves on the internet. Once you hit that submit button, you will be immortalized on the internet, forever.

I think it's because people still don't really consider the internet as being a very real part of their every day lives. There's this disconnection between real life and online life that I think makes people think they can get away with stuff on the internet, or more specifically, doesn't make them think when they post things on the internet.

I saw something the other day which I found quite amusing though that I'd never thought of before... people say "IRL" to mean "in real life" when they type things online; this guy referred to offline as IRL and online as URL :laugh: