#McCann Trolls

[Charlie Wilkes]

Trolls are stalkers, obsessives, cruel, bullies who have gone too far and abused the right to free speech and anonymity. Just like shouting fire in a cinema to cause a panic, people have to know there are bad consequences when they go too far.

The McCanns should be able to contact Twitter, make a complaint and Twitter could then say to the specific trolls who have gone to far that they are facing sanctions, from exposure to banning to warning to suspension.

This forum and the vast majority of forums do exactly that. There are codes of conduct. Why should the likes of Twitter not have standards?

I agree completely. I live in a small community. If I started putting up signs that said, "So-and-so deserves to die," I could expect a call from the sheriff's dept. It's common sense that people can't go around whipping up trouble like that. It is not "free speech"; it is inciting violence. But so far, it seems to be OK to do it on the Internet, especially on Twitter.

Twitter should act to set standards, lest standards be set for them by outside parties, maybe in the aftermath of a garish murder.

 

[Draca]

This article is good at explaining cyberbullies

How not to be a @sweepyface online
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/2014/10/07/how_not_to_be_a_sweepyface_online_mallick.html


"@sweepyface had joined in the online malevolence"

"The McCann hate campaign was unusual in that it was fuelled by something more than the usual misogyny or racism. It was a shared experience, an orgy of loathing."

 

[kerikiwi]

Not everyone wants their employer, co-workers, etc to know their political views. They still have the right to free speech but anonymity makes it more likely to express thoughts openly.

If people do not want others to know their views(political or other) they are not obliged to voice them.
Anonymity makes it more likely to express their thoughts covertly. Anonymously expressed thoughts are, by definition, not openly expressed thoughts.

 

[angrysoba]

Here's an article I basically agree with by David Aaronovitch:

Off we go. Again and again and again. And nothing makes us more liable to shout for the capture of the monster than our confusion and fear about what people are doing in cyberspace. Increasingly we demand that the law or some other intermediary step in to prevent the daily unpleasantness and discourtesy that people give vent to.

As Gerry McCann himself put it in an interview this week: “Something needs to be done about the abuse on the internet. I think we probably need more people to be charged.”

Lord above, but I understand why he says this. And Lord above, I also know that madness this way lies.

Because unless we are very clear and limited in what we seek to ban or proscribe online, then we will find ourselves running around the woods and lakes of the internet ignoring really important issues until we discover that we’ve been chasing a chimera.

If we don’t save legal intervention for the worst cases — the real stalking and serious harassment — then we will go crazy. And waste a lot of money.

With the conclusion:

in the meantime the rest of us have to apply a firmer harm test, for our own sakes. Are these words really going to kill me? Can I not cope by blocking the offender or by realising that they are probably inadequate and isolated? Or am I, objectively, conniving at being driven round the bend?

I ask myself this about some silly accuser nearly every day. Me and Zionism. Me and child abusers. Me and Rupert Murdoch. My hide has got thicker and thicker. So when the right-wing controversialist Katie Hopkins tweets, as she did this week, to ask: “How many more must die before the McCanns accept that their negligence is at the heart of all their grief?”, I don’t reach for my pitchfork. I reach for my mute button. Goodbye, Katie. And the rest is silence.