Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaun
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  ) 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?