Cyber-bullies could face two years in jail under new internet troll rules in UK
103 replies, posted
Comes down to ONE thing.
People making legislation that have nothing to do with what the legislation actually deals with.
[QUOTE=SleepyAl;44376817]I think the reason why ocry's post is getting a lot of agrees is because [b]people are confusing cyber-bullying with just casual throwaway insults[/b].
Cyber bullying is just bullying, but involving the use of electronic communication. It involves a lot more than just some person saying you suck in a game of DOTA. It's [I]deliberate[/I] verbal harassment, defamation, stalking, or other violent or abusive behavior that is [I]repeated[/I] to the point where it can cause [I]severe psychological distress[/I].
You can block the occasional shitposter on the internet. You can't block some person who made a web page about how you are a pervert, loser, or other made up nonsense, who posts your personal information on the internet, gossips untrue statements to all the people you know and ruins your life at school or work because of it.[/QUOTE]
But people are capable of exploiting the hell out of rules like these. Where is the line drawn between a casual throwaway insult and bullying? The answer: Where ever I feel like drawing it, as long as I can get back at this person I dont like; all I need to do is come up with a very convincing sob story of how I am on the verge of taking my own life because of various insults that have added up to my psychological distress I have today. Obviously there are cases where its clear that there is cyber bullying going on and cases where casual insults are being thrown around, those are two extremes. However, the line between what is what can get blurred pretty fast once you see that people can basically label any negative sentence as psychologically distressing which can be detrimental to people who are actually psychologically distressed and people who would be wrongly labeled as felons for childish drama.
[QUOTE=Krooms;44373972]So in these scenarios, you're bullied in real life and on the internet. Are both as bad as each other? Or is the irl "warzone" worse than the internet? Because even if it's not worse, and just as bad, should the warzone irl bullying be punishable by two years of jail time? and why not, if the on par internet bullying can be punishable for two years, perhaps we should also ban in school bullying via jail time?
Do both equally cause the same negative effects? If so, and going by this logic, then both should be punishable by two years jail time, yea?[/QUOTE]
From my point of view, yeah. I dont understand how getting a group of friends together and beating a guy until he bleeds will put you in a jail cell, unless you do it to them every day in school instead.
bullying of all forms needs to be treated like a legitimate crime and not just schoolyard shenanigans.
The main problem here is "cyber-bullying" and "trolling" are such huge blanket statements that it's hard to tell what counts as what.
For example, I could send a message to one of you that says "you suck. go die." and that could be classed as "cyber-bullying". I could also repeatedly send you messages on all of your accounts, each getting more and more hateful. Sure you could block me on all of those but what if I managed to get your e-mail from one of those sites? If I wanted I could make multiple accounts and continue to spam you every day. Sure block those too, I'll make more. Same goes with a phone number, only it's slightly harder to handle there.
My point is that if people like that are being arrested for up to two years then that's great, fuck those guys. If idiots making one or two statements to a person are going to be treated the same as them then that's stupid and shouldn't happen.
And to the people saying "just ignore them!" that only works with the stupid "lol ur a faget" comments your thinking of, that doesn't work with thousands of e-mails and texts harassing you.
[QUOTE=dgg;44376778]Is this a reply to my post? Because if so, it doesn't seem like you read it at all.[/QUOTE]
Because your point doesn't work. I did read it.
there is a reason bullying and harassment are two separate words.
you can't bully someone through the internet. you can however verbally harass someone through the internet.
no one is going to ever take you seriously if you say you've been cyber-bullied, but if you've been verbally harassed that's pretty fucking serious.
if this had been posted a few years ago, everybody would have called it idiotic. the internet has changed.
[QUOTE=ADT;44364249]At some point, you have to stop minding everything that people could say about you or you'll just end up being paranoiac.[/QUOTE]
There is a minimum point where you do care what others say about you. No one is going to want to be your friend if they know you because of a bad rumor someone spread online.
[QUOTE=Zillamaster55;44370531]Should I have just "closed my eyes"? just "turned off the computer"? I had [I]no fucking friends[/I] because of what she would spread around the school.[/QUOTE]
Yes, because according to the people in this thread, it's your fault for not ignoring her.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/Bqtl4Tn.jpg[/IMG]
Ah yes, bullying.
Basically, the legal form of harassment, because its never illegal when I harass people.
It's not always a viable option to just ignore people. Not only that, but why should the victim have to put in the effort to avoid this kind of shit when it shouldn't be happening in the first place.
It's incredibly easy for a phone number to be shared between and spread between people. Especially when they all go to the same school. And how many kids go into highschool (or grade school for that matter) with the "don't trust anyone" attitude? They're encouraged to try to be nice and make friends. With technology the way it is today, it's incredibly common to start to get to know someone, not realize they're an asshole right away, and give them your phone number/facebook/email/whateverthefuck. By that time it's already too late. It only takes asshole to give that information out to everyone who wants to join in the bullying.
How many of you have had your phone blown up over and over with terrible fucking messages like "kill yourself" and "you're a waste of space" ? Think about how something like that would effect someone who might already have confidence and self esteem issues, or is already in a suicidal mind set. The victims aren't all adults who have had plenty of time to learn to not naively trust everyone. Bullying is bullying, regardless of where or how it happens, and it CAN lead to pushing the victim into suicide, which is NOT OKAY.
Like, I get that not all of you have been bullied, and I'm really happy for you about that, but just because it didn't happen to you doesn't make it less of a real problem for those of us that had to or still have to deal with it. There were times in my highschool days where I seriously considered suicide to be a viable option, because no matter what I tried I couldn't escape from it. People shouldn't have to stop using their computers or have to go to their phone carrier to block numbers just to get people to leave them alone.
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