The tale of the Twitter abuse of Olympic diver Tom Daley has dominated social media today. Daley, who came a disappointing fourth along with synchronised diving partner Pete Waterfield in their event yesterday, was subjected to abuse, then apologies, then more abuse by a Twitter user. This morning, Dorset police said they had arrested a 17-year-old in a guest house in Weymouth for “malicious communications”.
I genuinely don’t want to get into the arguments on the specifics of this case, as the teenager hasn’t been charged, so I think we need to actually see what transpires before taking a definite position.
The above sentence is 166 characters, and therefore unsuitable for Twitter. But I wonder is the sentiment incompatible too?
It feels incredibly fogeyish to complain about the pace inflicted on us by social media, but I still think it’s a point worth making. The instant nature of the medium seems sometimes to affect how we think: we have to rush to judgment before the story passes us by. We have to offer our approval, show our disdain, and most worryingly, we have to demand action.
The first “Twitter mob” I can remember was the case of Jan Moir’s distasteful Daily Mail article on the circumstances of the death of Boyzone star Stephen Gately. Thousands tweeted their disapproval. 25,000 registered complaints with the Press Complaints Commission. The commission refused to censure Moir. Twitter again exploded in outrage.
Two-and-a-half years on, that looks mild. In the past year, we’ve seen examples of people getting arrested for saying stupid, crass, offensive things on social media — Azhar Ahmed insulting soldiers on Facebook, Liam Stacey wishing Fabrice Muamba dead and then descending into racist abuse. In the case of Stacey, hundreds of people reported him to the police, and there was barely contained glee when he was arrested and subsequently jailed.
I worry that this will become the norm: Man says nasty thing on the internet, nice people get upset by nasty thing, nice people demand something be done about nasty thing, police pursue easy conviction (all the evidence is online after all, and there are a million willing witnesses), nasty man gets convicted, and everybody slaps each other on the back for having done their bit. The thrill of active netizenship.
This could end up corrosive: increasingly narrowing the online social sphere so it is eventually only available to the articulate and right-thinking, and fools will suffer real-world punishment.
It doesn’t feel much like free speech. We need to start thinking about better ways of dealing with hurtful, crass speech.
Padraig Reidy is news editor at Index on Censorship
9 Comments
Why can’t we have the twitter mob but without the bit where the police get involved? Regardless of how many Daley fans report the twitter troll, the authorities should be able to make a judgement on whether something is an indiscriminate rant, a Daily Mail attempt to get website hits, or a specific death threat. What was interesting about this twitter mob is that the outrage, the social sanction, actually promoted the troll to apologise. An angry twitter mob should be *instead* of a police visit, not the gateway to one.
Most of us don’t believe we ‘have to demand action’ at all. The only thing I’m demanding as a result of this is that people learn how to use the ‘block’ button.
And Stacey didn’t ‘wish Muamba dead’ in the colloquial sense – he merely observed that he was dead (erroneously, as it turned out) and wasn’t sufficiently sorry about it to suit Twitter.
As with this latest mobbing, it was the reactions of other Twitter users to his initial Tweet that goaded him into further outbursts.
Twitter users need to learn NOT TO FEED THE ATTENTION SEEKING TROLL!
It seems to me that you’re missing an important point here. He wasn’t arrested, presumably, for upsetting passers by on Twitter. If unlawful harassment is defined as that which is intended to cause alarm or distress to an individual then it’s between the poster, the target, and the police to determine whether it’s arrestable, and any charges will be on that basis, not on the basis that he might have offended a large group of onlookers.
Free speech is OK but you have to draw a line at the totally abusive (Jan Moir was that)However she was an adult (I think). This kid was 17 years old I dread to look back on what I said or did when I was 17. Perhaps Tom who lets admit it is very privileged (He has worked hard for it) Should meet him and help. A criminal record will not help at all.
Also the case of Hamza Kashghari, a Saudi who poetically stated his thoughts of Prophet Mohammed.
He fled the country to Malaysia after many Saudis pinpointed his house on Twitter and asked for his head to be slashed.
The story goes on that he was detained by Malaysian Police at the airport where was forced back to Saudi and has captured by government officials.
Till this day Hamza is jailed with no accusations.
Just search Google and you’d find many articles about the mater.
The backstory seems to be that the TD tweets were actually quite mild compared with the other racist, pornographic, sexist and violent stuff this kid was coming out with. He seems pretty pathetic in seeking attention and the most mature thing to do would be ignore him. He linked to porn sites on his Twitter account and seemed to be lots younger than 17 – more like 12 and that would be a Child Protection issue… Still would be dodgy if some of his followers were under age. Trouble is we’ve rather lost where the line that we shouldn’t cross is – and the naming of bile like this as banter or entertainment instead of symptoms of mental illness, or what you get when the phone is smarter than the user. Free speech needs almost an internal check – this lad had no check. Hopefully he’ll get the help he needs. The torrent of abuse he himself got again seems to be folk who enjoy the transgression, but without taking any responsibility for the outcome.
Good article. I remember reading a Jeremy Clarkson (dont stop reading yet!) column years ago where he was advocating the ridicule of fools on quizes and other TV shows, not for entertainment sake, but because it is important to highlight and preferably mock stupidity like this. Fools, be they genuine bigots or adolescent twits should have their opinions ridiculed publicly rather than censored or criminalised.
There are many issues – Louise Mensch wanted to gag Twitter during the 2011 uprising, injunctions can be broken outside of the UK and miscarriages of justice highlighted to the discomfort of the UK government. Twitter et al is both a great democratizer and a platform for neo nazi loons.
I partly agree with Robert. I firmly believe that what ever you give out on the internet you should deal with what you get back. I dont have any sympathy with the troll getting abused back on twitter. He made his own noose in that instance.
However the police involvement is ridiculous and even if he was arrested on account of his cartoonish death threats, I feel the law regarding this is far too loose and vague. The police and the disgusting self-rightious snitches that help them find and arrest trolls should take into account what twitter is. A joke. A farce of a microblogging site where trolling, flamming and abuse is the norm. Secondly, plausibility of a death threat. The troll in question is clearly not able to carry out any of his threats practically and, the fact they on twitter, indicate its just hot air and no plans for murder are conciveable.
3 Trackbacks
[...] see also Index on Censorship on ‘the thrill of active netizenship’. Rate this:Link love! Share [...]
[...] on suspicion of malicious communication has been issued with a harassment warning in connection to tweets sent to Olympic diver Tom Daley. The teenager has been bailed to return to the police station at a later date while the force [...]
[...] Tom Daley and how to deal with Twitter fools [...]