BBC - Newsbeat - UK 'too heavy-handed' with Twitter and online trolls
Trolling - it depends who you listen to, as to whether trolling is the most awful thing in the world, or it's just done to annoy people, who struggle with grammar and spelling.
The article above is about the dealings of the British Police, who are heavy handed it seems when dealing with people who say horrible things to (often very famous) people, on Twitter and facebook. Britain arrests and prosecutes people who have been very nasty or racist etc, and they go to jail for seemingly speaking their mind.
It's a tough one, do we see what someone has written at face value and punish accordingly, or do we figure out what has been said? How far can it go? When does 'freedom of speech' cross a line, is there a line?
I don't know the answers and I would quite like to hear what you have to say...
2 comments:
In terms of speaking a line has clearly been drawn, and has been there for a long time. Slander is illegal. You also are not allowed to say certain things to certain people, or you will find yourself having to do a 'John Terry'.
What is wrong at the moment is that I'm likely to get arrested if I say something like "I could kill for a cup of tea". This is especially true if it ends up on twitter where it becomes 'evidence' We should all know it's a turn of phrase and not a threat, but there are 'stupid' people out there who don't (choose not to?) understand that. Some of them are in important roles like the police.
These people have a perception that the one who interprets the comment is the one with real understanding. This is the problem with all the legislation and give lawyer hours of arguments.
I have no answers other that we should all have more respect for each other, but that isn't going to happen without a transformation.
The issue for me is that the state has been encroaching on free speech for some time, to the extent that people can now be prosecuted for offending someone.
If I were to speak my mind on the issue of faith then I would blatantly offend anyone who was not a Christian (and probably a few Christians too!) because I would be telling them that the only way to God is through Jesus and that those that don't believe this are going to Hell.
If I were to openly and publicly express my personal view on sexuality I would be unsurprised if I did not receive a visit from the Police fairly soon after.
Free speech MUST allow people to insult other people or else we open up the idea of insult to being interpreted by judges and the Police, which can lead to to a huge curtailing of liberties.
The law already covers people who harass other people (e.g. insult them over a sustained period) and this is where the "line" should be. For it to be any further is to invite people to impose their own values on society with ease.
As to how this relates to internet trolling, there are 2 key things that we can look at, aside from the aforementioned harassment law.
The first is that the internet, on the whole, does a very good job of self-policing.
The best example (although it did then have some rather ridiculous consequences) is the recent trolling of Tom Daley after he failed to get a medal in the synchronised diving. Daley posted about it on Twitter and the idiot that trolled him became the subject of a series of tweets telling him where to go. The downside to this is that, as happened, if it then becomes a "news story" the Police will then look to come in and it gets blown out of all proportion. If it had been left so that all that happened was that the troll got his online arse handed to him I reckon he would have learned his lesson (at least for a while) and that would have been the end of it.
The second is the option that Daley didn't take, but is readily available on all the social media platforms, that of ignoring/blocking the troll. Granted, Twitter makes blocking harder than, say, Facebook, as it simply requires a new account to be set up and you can troll the same target again. But then, if you are going to use media like this then you have to accept that you are making yourself a potential target for any idiot that might wish to act like a pillock and troll someone.
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