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Twitter 'troll' to pay six-figure sum

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Twitter 'troll' to pay six-figure sum

#161

Post by rovolo »

wutbrodo wrote: post #22
duxup wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be just the type of stories I happen to see. But I feel like I run into more cases where UK defamation laws have some absurd outcomes ... and I'm not sure the result is that there's less defamation in the UK.

There's no question that the UK's speech laws are abusive, especially to American sensibilities. You can find stories of people being arrested for calling a police horse "gay", or saying "woof" to a police dog, or the guy who taught his girlfriend's dog to respond to Seig Heil to troll her, or the 19 y/o who quoted a Snoop Dogg lyric on her Instagram page, or the guy sent to _jail_ for leaving anti-religion cartoons…

I don't think you're giving a great summary of these stories.

The first two are related to personal defamation:

* Police horse and dog: people could be arrested for "threatening, abusive or insulting" speech in public at the time. The police, being wankers, overused their discretion on "insulting" speech and so the law was changed in 2013 to remove "insulting" as a criterion. https://newsfeed.time.com/2013/01/16/you-may-now-call-a-poli...

The rest fall under hate speech:

* Seig Heil dog: fined £800 for hate speech for posting a video of the dog to YouTube. He said "gas the Jews" to the dog 23 times. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dog-nazi-salute-sentence-mark-m...

* 19 y/o Snoop Dogg lyric: 8 week curfew, fined £600. She added "kill a snitch n** and rob a rich n**" to her Instagram bio. https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/woman-wh...

* The guy repeatedly left the cartoons in airport _prayer-rooms_. "Other [images] linked Muslims to attacks on airports." 6 month suspended prison sentence (not sure about the length of the pre-trial detention), fined £250, 100hrs unpaid work (community service?). http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/merseyside/854961...

I don't necessarily agree with the criminalization, but these 3 instances were all people doing shitty things I don't think they should have done. Downplaying the parts people actually got angry about makes it seem like you're complaining about the people getting angry about the actions rather than the trials and punishments.

Re: Twitter 'troll' to pay six-figure sum

#162

Post by robertlagrant »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #159
Zuider wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A national news outlet such as the BBC is obliged to be accurate and clear, factually and in its use of legal terminology. Both the BBC headline and the amended one above encourage a partisan interpretation of the case that is not clearly supported by the given facts, sparse as they are. 1) The word "troll," for example. That invokes a specific meaning of an individual who deliberately provokes strife for the sake of…

A national news outlet such as the BBC is obliged to be accurate and clear, factually and in its use of legal terminology. I don't know anything about UK law and editorial standards. However, I would always expect a news outlet targeting the general public to use the common meanings of words, instead of abiding by the nuanced jargon of whatever field they are covering. It's the same reason I don't get mad when newspa…

No, we know the difference between damages and settling.

Re: Twitter 'troll' to pay six-figure sum

#163

Post by vl »

walshemj wrote: post #152
woah wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that introduces a whole different dimension to this. That makes it sound like the "trolling" may have been a legitimate political criticism (unfounded or not), and the "troll" paid out due to a threat to their personal safety. Even darker that the threat was made by the national broadcaster of the occupying nation.

You are aware of the "troubles" ? I am assuming good faith here but there are para militaries on both sides that make Trumps most headbanging supporters look like boy scouts. Their idea of "legitimate political criticism" goes a bit further than you would like.

Lol, "Para military" on one side being actual British Army?

Re: Twitter 'troll' to pay six-figure sum

#164

Post by [deleted] »

akersten wrote: post #14
echelon wrote: post #2

I'm a fan of free speech, but defamation is one of the limits I agree with. The UK has a stricter framework than the US, but I think these cases should happen in the US too. It's good to see precedent being established for prosecuting those that abuse social media for evil. I'm interested in who the guilty party is in this case. They can afford a six figure penalty and want to remain anonymous.

No, the US gets this right, and this case would be thrown out promptly were it in American jurisdiction (well, presumably - I don't know the extent of the "trolling" since the article is scant on detail, but I assume it's nothing over-the-top or they would have brought it to light to support their case). There's a much higher bar to establish defamation against Public Figures in the US -- as there should be. They are…

[deleted]

Re: Twitter 'troll' to pay six-figure sum

#165

Post by iso1631 »

azinman2 wrote: post #44
bpodgursky wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a _ton_ of people would come up with 6 figures if the alternative was jail time. It doesn't have to be cash in the bank -- take out debt, remortgage your house, sell your car, borrow from friends and family, etc.

I don’t know UK law, but can a libel suit end in jail? Isn’t this civil versus criminal?

I believe the criminal offence of libel (defamatory libel) was abolished in 2010, not sure if there's any other

Re: Twitter 'troll' to pay six-figure sum

#166

Post by dec0dedab0de »

robertlagrant wrote: post #162
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A national news outlet such as the BBC is obliged to be accurate and clear, factually and in its use of legal terminology. I don't know anything about UK law and editorial standards. However, I would always expect a news outlet targeting the general public to use the common meanings of words, instead of abiding by the nuanced jargon of whatever field they are covering. It's the same reason I don't get mad when newspa…

No, we know the difference between damages and settling.

It's not clear to me why we can't settle to pay damages.

If it was "settle to pay for damages" would that make it okay?

How about "settle to pay for the damages caused?"

I love being pedantic as much as the next guy, but the government doesn't get to define what words mean.

Re: Twitter 'troll' to pay six-figure sum

#167

Post by iso1631 »

vl wrote: post #163
walshemj wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are aware of the "troubles" ? I am assuming good faith here but there are para militaries on both sides that make Trumps most headbanging supporters look like boy scouts. Their idea of "legitimate political criticism" goes a bit further than you would like.

Lol, "Para military" on one side being actual British Army?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulster_Volunteer_Force

Re: Twitter 'troll' to pay six-figure sum

#168

Post by Manuel_D »

InitialLastName wrote: post #125
Manuel_D wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I simply don’t get why we don’t hold the social media platforms accountable for the content that gets posted to them The scale of content being posted on social media is such that this liability makes running a social media platform effectively impossible. All user generated content would have to be manually reviewed before being posted. This would be prohibitively expensive. As for the Trump ban, freedom of speech…

> The scale of content being posted on social media is such that this liability makes running a social media platform effectively impossible. All user generated content would have to be manually reviewed before being posted. This would be prohibitively expensive. Since when is "operating responsibly would be too expensive" an excuse that we allow businesses to use to avoid any responsibility for the damage they cause…

It's not just a question if expenses but also responsibility. If I post a post-it note on my schools bulletin board making defamatory statements who is at fault? Me? Or the school, because it was their bulletin board?

Re: Twitter 'troll' to pay six-figure sum

#169

Post by ceejayoz »

n4bz0r wrote: post #158
ceejayoz wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't just "trace" people on the internet. I mean, there's doxxing, which is often effective, or getting a court to issue a subpoena to Twitter for an IP that you can then go subpoena an ISP for.

I must admit, writing the comment I didn't take into account authorities being able to request personal information. But my initial thought was about something else, and I could've communicated it better. > The BBC radio and TV presenter traced the identity of the person who was behind an online campaign against him. The wording in the article can be seen as the man and his colleagues did all the tracing of a complet…

> Not only that sounds ridiculous...

I'm not sure why. Doxxing is quite easy to do in many cases.

Upload a photo that's geotagged, have an unusual name, analysis of your network of friends/followers, linkages to other social profiles, etc.

Re: Twitter 'troll' to pay six-figure sum

#170

Post by vl »

barneygale wrote: post #154
woah wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

England is occupying part of Ireland. I have no personal opinion about this, or links to Ireland, but it seems pretty obvious to anyone looking at it from the outside.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Ireland#Public_opinion The people of Northern Ireland disagree, and we ought to leave it to them.

Essentially it's a piece curved out of a country where descendants of occupants exceed in number native population. Of course it's occupied for so long that now it's "their own", still doesn't change the fact that it was occupied and not treated equally historically in the first place.
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