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Trolls will be jailed for ‘psychological harm’

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Re: Trolls will be jailed for ‘psychological harm’

#141

Post by teakettle42 »

floatingatoll wrote: post #138
teakettle42 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I read your moral position here as "if you are too frail to resist someone's words, you don't deserve protection from their verbal abuse with malicious intent" I’m not the original parent, but I read (and share) the position as: Barring intent by the speaker to inflict direct and immediate physical harm, if you are too frail to maintain your mental health in the face of someone else’s speech (or you pretend to be),…

In the case of the UK's laws, they are targeting people with specific intent to cause psychological harm. That's a critical component of "trolling": if no harm was caused to the abused party, then the trolls wouldn't bother, because they're fixated on hurting others for personal pleasure. So, then, "barring intent" is an invalid condition for this discussion, right?

I said direct and immediate physical harm.

“Psychological harm” is something else entirely.

Your position presupposes the guilt and innocence of both parties.

The individual claiming “psychological harm” can just as easily be the perpetrator, and psychological harm will be inflicted on the victim by the state when they’re arrested for upsetting someone with narcissistic personality disorder.

Re: Trolls will be jailed for ‘psychological harm’

#142

Post by consumer451 »

teakettle42 wrote: post #139
asxd wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presenting two choices as mutually exclusive, when they are not, is definitely a false dichotomy.

How are they not mutually exclusive? This is a profoundly fundamental idea about human freedom. You cannot both grant people the freedom to act — even if that means they might use that freedom to harm others — and simultaneously, ensure that nobody can come to harm.

The problem with this to me is that it makes "freedom to harm others" sound like something that should be valued.

Also, the exact definition of "safe" would help in analyzing the original statement.

Re: Trolls will be jailed for ‘psychological harm’

#143

Post by HNo »

hypersoar wrote: post #98
drost wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meechan was arrested on suspicion of breaching the Communications Act 2003.[20] On 19 March 2018, Meechan was convicted of breaching the act by Sheriff Derek O'Carroll at Airdrie Sheriff Court.[21] The court ruled that Meechan's claim that the video was a joke intended for his girlfriend "lacked credibility" as Meechan's girlfriend did not subscribe to the YouTube channel to which the video was posted. https://en.w…

> On 23 April 2018, Meechan was sentenced to a fine of £800, with no prison sentence.

>Meechan was arrested

Technically if you're arrested you're thrown in jail (overnight or for a few days).

Re: Trolls will be jailed for ‘psychological harm’

#144

Post by clairity »

umvi wrote: post #92
_fat_santa wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The proposed law change will shift the focus on to the “harmful effect” of a message rather than if it contains “indecent” or “grossly offensive” content, which is the present basis for assessing its criminality. I'm feeling very harmed after reading your comment. I realize the content's of your message are objectively harmless, but I "feel" harmed. So...off to jail you go. --- But on a more serious note. Like you…

> we have come to the point where what you actually say, you intentions, are completely irrelevant, it's all about how your message is perceived The way this is typically framed is "impact matters more than intent". Like if you weren't watching where you were walking and accidentally stepped on someone's foot. You didn't _intend_ to harm them, but the overall _impact_ was that you did harm them. As you rightly point…

as happens so often, basketball provides a microcosm. fouls are called (and varying penalties assessed) for illegal moves that lead to an unfair advantage. implicit in that is that intent matters. many times, a foul isn’t assessed for an illegal maneuver because the intent to gain advantage wasn’t there (contact was happenstance) or no advantage was gained. however, some fouls are so dangerous (e.g., undercutting a shooter), that intent does not matter, and a foul is called even when done completely unintentionally.

as always, we have to consider the nuance and avoid overly broad statements/policies.

Re: Trolls will be jailed for ‘psychological harm’

#145

Post by laurent92 »

aaomidi wrote: post #54
White_Wolf wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happy i'm too old for this s*t. So what happens now? If some guys ends up on the receiving end of regret charges, what can they do to defend themselves? Wear body cams to record all intercourse and save as a proof of consent?

Have you confirmed that what the other poster said is true, and that text messages are not admissible evidence in a court of law?

Ok, you are suggesting what I said was false, so I am researching sources:

== UK

Search for “New NPCC consent form”. Since 2020, seizing texts can only happen with the complainant’s consent, and the form highlights that there should be no repercussion if consent is not given. Therefore, it doesn’t alleviate the main criticism of false accusations: The ability for the accused to prove his innocence.

Link to the consent guidance: https://cdn.prgloo.com/media/download/a9b9b561b88b45c78772fb...

== Other countries

I didn’t immediately find proof (searched Australia, US and Canada) but the general narrative that having her phone searched is a trauma for the victim, and therefore her phone should only be searched with her consent.

Re: Trolls will be jailed for ‘psychological harm’

#146

Post by strogonoff »

concinds wrote: post #68

A society where: - you are held responsible for other people's feelings, and for their feelings as a result of your words and actions, and: - anything that causes anyone to feel bad, is looked down upon by the collective Is tyranny by the emotionally stunted. The fundamental problem with it, is it makes society more enmeshed (a pathological relationship dynamic). People start caring more about going with the grain, t…

The problem is not with trolling per se (there is troll-like behaviour IRL, and we have learned to deal with it appropriately) but with scale and amplification of trolling by that oligopoly of a small handful of social platforms serving millions of locked-in users each with tailored content that their algorithms consider “engaging” for this particular person.

Big Social is in symbiosis with trolls and profits by giving them platform, and I suspect this will remain so for as long as their business model has the advertisers as primary paying customers and main source of revenue.

That said, targeted persistent trolling (I prefer to call it bullying though) is horrible, and I’m sure there are extreme cases where jail may actually be warranted.

Re: Trolls will be jailed for ‘psychological harm’

#147

Post by floatingatoll »

teakettle42 wrote: post #141
floatingatoll wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of the UK's laws, they are targeting people with specific intent to cause psychological harm. That's a critical component of "trolling": if no harm was caused to the abused party, then the trolls wouldn't bother, because they're fixated on hurting others for personal pleasure. So, then, "barring intent" is an invalid condition for this discussion, right?

I said direct and immediate physical harm. “Psychological harm” is something else entirely. Your position presupposes the guilt and innocence of both parties. The individual claiming “psychological harm” can just as easily be the perpetrator, and psychological harm will be inflicted on the victim by the state when they’re arrested for upsetting someone with narcissistic personality disorder.

I do not presuppose guilt or innocence, but a claim must be made in order to reach a judgment on either, so all claims are presupposed in that sense.

It seems unlikely that a UK court would reach such a judgment in favor of the perpetrator, as opposed to simply jailing them.

Re: Trolls will be jailed for ‘psychological harm’

#148

Post by maccolgan »

13415 wrote: post #29
Subsentient wrote: post #26

And this is why I'm never going to move to Europe. My jokes would be considered "obscene" or "indecent" or something and I'd be thrown in prison. At least here in the States, for now, the government is letting the private companies perform the censorship, and not imprisoning people for tasteless humor.

You mean the UK, not Europe in general. The UK is not even part of the EU anymore and has been steering towards authoritarianism for two decades already - together with the US as their closest ally.

The EU and its constituent countries aren't authoritarian?

Re: Trolls will be jailed for ‘psychological harm’

#149

Post by unclebucknasty »

nradov wrote: post #137
unclebucknasty wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take the other side of that argument. In a world where we spend increasingly more time online, sociopaths and other bad actors have been handed far too much power/influence and that's net negative for society. Like it or not, the online world has become a public space--The Public Space. And, now we're talking about metaverses that will further immerse us. If someone were to follow a person down a public street,…

The San Francisco Police generally don't do anything to stop deranged homeless drug addicts from following people down the street, screaming obscenities and generally harassing them. SF residents seem to be fine with that state of affairs, or at least it doesn't bother them enough to vote to change it. And to be clear I don't intend that as a criticism of SF necessarily. The point is that there is no universal worldw…

>The San Francisco Police generally don't do anything to stop deranged homeless...

I don't know that that's true, but I think it's pretty clear that homeless, mentally ill drug addicts are a different problem.

>The point is that there is no universal worldwide standard of tolerable behavior

These arguments always baffle me, as they essentially suggest that nothing means anything and we have no way of determining what a civilized, functioning society should look like. Yet, here we are — with laws and everything.

There's a reasonableness standard applied to these things. We apply it for every scenario where gray areas exist. It's also why we have judges, juries and a court system.

>Would you be happy if the laws of Saudi Arabia or North Korea were enforced online?

I'm missing how the laws of Saudi Arabia or North Korea have anything to do with this case in the UK or a hypothetical one in the US.

Re: Trolls will be jailed for ‘psychological harm’

#150

Post by Clubber »

md8z wrote: post #63
colpabar wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we are talking about laws, it is absolutely not irrelevant to talk about the people who will be enforcing them. This thread is about an extremely subjective law, and some people think that's a really bad idea because the people enforcing it will abuse it, because it's easy to do.

Could you think of ways we could make it less subjective? Or are you saying that you think it's impossible for us to make it an objective law?

It would be impossible. If we had hard rules, like you couldn't say "Fuck Joe Biden," it would easily be circumvented with a coded language like "Let's go Brandon," and therefore useless. We would have to constantly be upgrading the language to accommodate all the coded language. Eventually lawmakers will get sick of fooling with it and it will either stop, being half baked, still under penalty of imprisonment; or they will make some umbrella law that basically restricts nearly all speech under penalty of imprisonment. It's got noble intentions, but really gets ugly when you start to map out implementation.

It's also has the "I know it when I see it," aura to it.

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

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