Should bad behaviour on social networking sites be criminal? That’s the discussion of the day after @Rileyy_69 messaged Tom Daley on Twitter, saying “you let your dad down i hope you know that” (Daley’s father died last year of a brain tumour). A 17-year-old boy was arrested and apologised for the message.
Today many are musing that the arrest is too much – what he tweeted was undoubtedly offensive, yet do we want police regulating speech on social media?
Unfortunately, there’s no legislating for boneheadedness, crassness and stupidity. (Beth Tweddle has also been the subject of Twitter abuse which hasn’t prompted police action.) There’s no shortage of people in the world available to say stupid things and unlike the rest of us they don’t wait until they’re drunk and chatting with their best friend at the end of a party.
Yet online harassment can be particularly insidious and be widely dispersed. We’ve heard in the news about sustained campaigns again people in which their tormenters used social networking sites to make their lives hell. Harassment laws need to take into account the particular qualities of online speech, how it’s different from printed speech and the damage it can do.
In the Guardian, John Kampfer writes that if people “wish to misuse [Twitter] to express their own flawed personalities, perhaps it is best to leave them to it – in miserable isolation.”
For that strategy to work, we need to all ignore the haters, so their comments bring only deafening silence. In my experience, that is still merely a dream. There will always be people who want to spew their hateful thoughts online, trying to gain attention and get a wider audience. Maybe it’s time we think more imaginatively about how to discourage that behaviour. Social networking sites, lawmakers, the police and individual users should all be involved in that discussion.
Until then we’ll continue to see all manner of nasty tweets.
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Liska
Thursday 2nd of August 2012
I know when I got hate mail on Twitter it took me 3 full months to get over it, so I am a bit biased on this one. xx
Christina E (@Beadzoid)
Thursday 2nd of August 2012
Such a tough one. I think that when tweets contain violent threats then it does cross a line and prosecution is deserved. In the same way that threats in person are not acceptable, so should be the case of social media and internet forums.
However, if the threats are silly and obviously not meant, as in the case of the man who was prosecuted after making threats against Nottingham airport, then common sense should be used. No way should that have gone to court and I think the outcome was the right one.
The comments against Beth Tweddle and Tom Daley however were disgraceful, but unless I am unaware of them, no threats were made and although extremely hurtful and malicious are not really worthy of action by the CPS or local police.
That said, I don't think such behaviour should be simply ignored, but perhaps authorities could work with ISP's to make it easy to impose penalties and restrict access to those found acting maliciously, if not strictly unlawfully. Those tweets were a form of bullying, and as one who has been victim to bullies it does get my goat - but I do think free speech is important and I'd hate to see a severely restricted and bureaucratic social media. There needs to be another way to deliver consequences to such people without ruining it for everyone else.
Perhaps legislation would be helpful in setting out what is absolutely illegal (threats, violent and sexual), but I think that we will continue to see a piecemeal case by case approach with precedents being set and referred to for guidance. And I don't think that's a bad thing.
Stacey
Thursday 2nd of August 2012
The arrest was due to him tweeting a (later deleted) death threat to Tom Daley after Tom's fans called the kid names etc.
Sadly we can't police rude people but in this case an arrest was totally justified.
Christina E (@Beadzoid)
Thursday 2nd of August 2012
I just wrote my response saying I don't think arrest is suitable for the mere nastiness of the kid's tweets, the reports I read did not mention a death threat. Merely the tweets about his father and a later apology for being disappointed in Daley not winning.
It is certainly good that the offender was suspended from Twitter.
Crystal Jigsaw
Wednesday 1st of August 2012
I do actually think that in this particular case the arrest was made due to the horrific threats made to other people by the tweeter, other than the awful comments made to Tom Daley. The boy did apologise to Daley but his behaviour was most definitely unacceptable. I presume he was simply, in a very disturbing way admittedly, portraying his need to fit in with boys he perhaps mixes with in his neighbourhood. Judging from the death and rape threats he made, it wouldn't surprise me if he is part of a gang. I suspect the comments he made to Daley just highlighted to the authorities how incredibly vicious and maybe even capable of violent acts this boy is.
I don't think the police overreacted. They have a job to do and when death and rape threats are made, however they are made, it is something that should be taken very seriously indeed. If it hadn't been Daley, it would have been someone else.