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Re-enforcing what quite a lot of people have been saying, a police chief from Cumbria has said that, no, we don’t need new laws to tackle trolls and that more “common sense” is needed, as well as action from Twitter itself. Basically, it’s Twitter’s problem.
Speaking on behalf of the body representing Britain’s top coppers, Stuart Hyde, chief constable of Cumbria, said that although it was right for the rozzers to intervene where lives were threatened or being made a misery by trolls, officers shouldn’t be “dragged off the streets to deal with frivolous complaints” — it’s not exactly a riot, now is it?
Hyde thinks that it’s Twitter’s responsibility to do something to make sure people can use its service safely and securely. Frankly, it seems that even if the police really did want to deal with the Twitter trolling problem, it couldn’t anyway. It’s too big a task for our police force to handle without compromising other services.
While I agree, that getting serious abuse on Twitter isn’t on, celebrities seem to fail to grasp the concept of the block. Twitter allows you to block people from contacting you precisely for this reason, and while it won’t stop the most determined of trolls, it’ll at least get rid of the abuse temporarily. [Guardian]
Image credit: Police from Shutterstock
As unlikely as you might think, one of the best people for actively promoting the block feature is Lord Sugar! Fairly regularly he has a few hours going through and blocking/reporting the haters!
Agree that threats of violence etc should be police actionable BUT the rest is just part of being contactable in the modern world. When I was a kid people used to make prank phone calls (Bart in The Simpsons still does!), play ‘Knock Down Ginger’ and other stuff which probably was just as annoying /upsetting for those being tormented. Getting abused on Twitter or Facebook, block the tormentors or leave the service (and inhabit the real world).
Had to google “Knock down ginger”, as the mental image of what it possibly entailed was horrific
What’s there to google?
You find a ginger person, beat them until they fall down and run off laughing.
It’s great fun for all the family!
Unless the family is Ginger of course. But since Ginger people have no souls it doesn’t even matter then.
You just have to be careful not to catch the Gingivitis…
just man up and ignore the little gits, if you get some snot nosed little to$$pot shouting abuse over twitter then block and report and let twitter ban his IP/UN. Twitter should change the T&C (maybe it already says this, who reads them?) to say you will be banned for life if you use abuse. since most people also use facebook, linkedin, goolge+ (<-LOL, google+) so tracking them is not hard. Does anyone else think that these sites should have a shared user ban policy like local pubs do, Get banned in one, get banned in all? that would be great, although youtube would loose half its users over night!
Finally the Police are making sense of this rubbish.