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Why are police and prosecutors not paying more attention to online lynch mobs? I assume at least a few of the death threats were made carelessly and left a trai

Why are police and prosecutors not paying more attention to online lynch mobs? I assume at least a few of the death threats were made carelessly and left a trail. It's not like this stuff is protected speech. A handful of well publicized jail terms would go a long way towards protecting the next potential victim.

aetherson 8y ago
It's protected speech (in the US) unless you can demonstrate that it's a "true threat," and not something that a reasonable reader would interpret as hyperbole. You'd probably have an uphill battle convincing a court that an online death threat is a "true threat." What percentage of them are acted on? How many decimal places do you have to go to before it doesn't round to 0? I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, please don't threaten people with death, even if you don't mean it, it's gross.
- kolpa 8y ago
  It doesn't matter what percentage of threats are acted upon, it matters what percentage of threatened people are harmed. I think conspiracy laws should apply here, where an "online lynch mob" ends up with one person committing a physical act in line with the mob's speech. If 100 people perpetrate a crime together -- even if loosely coupled mob, it's not less of a crime than if 1 person perpetrates it alone.
  - aetherson 8y ago
    I can't tell what exactly you're calling for, but I can't think of any interpretation that doesn't seem like an incredibly bad idea. Making a person face criminal liability for making a negative comment because a third party, that your defendant has never met, committed an actual crime is farcically orwellian.
    - kolpa 8y ago
      In the USA it is historically and modernly generally considered a good idea. The legal term is "Fighting words" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words
      - aetherson 8y ago
        "At most, [the fighting words doctrine] allows punishment of face-to-face insults, directed at a particular person and likely to cause an immediate fight." https://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/make-no-law/2018/01/fighting-words/ https://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/make-no-law/2018/01/fi... That's a podcast with transcript from a free speech lawyer discussing the fighting words doctrine. Again, you're super unclear about the exact scenario you're imagining. But the only way that you could be punished for saying "I am going to murder you" under the fighting words doctrine (instead of the true threat doctrine) is if you said it face-to-face with someone and that person was likely to punch you for it. It is certainly not the case that if you made some statement like "I think you should die in a fire," online and then someone else that you had never interacted with attacked the person that you spoke to, that the fighting words doctrine would have anything whatsoever to do with any case against you.
        kolpa 8y ago
        I may have conflated "fighting words" with "imminent lawless action". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio
        aetherson 8y ago
        Look, why don't you actually try describing some scenario and what you think ought to be the legal result of that scenario. There are almost no internet comment threads that can plausibly be described as inciting imminent lawless action.
        int_19h 8y ago
        For "imminent" to apply, the person posting the comment would have to be reasonably believing (or should have been reasonably believing) that said comment would cause the action. Do you seriously think this bar can be met for a random Internet comment like that? Especially given the specific example prompting the court case that you are citing?
throwaway76543 8y ago
Many internet death threats are not "true threats" and are indeed protected speech. Not all, but a surprising amount of it is. You can read more starting with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elonis_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elonis_v._United_States
- kolpa 8y ago
  This is a subtle point. The court ruled that you can't be guilty of threatening to hurt someone unless you actually intend to hurt them. But if you play in the grey space, by intending to create fear of harm without (in the vein of It's Always Sunny's infamous "because of the implication" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yUafzOXHPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yUafzOXHPE), that's apparently legal. Presumably because to some extent the law is not intended to directly prevent crime, but only to deter crime by punishing it. At a social level, it may make sense to "sacrifice" a few people to murder in order to maintain a free society while detering most murders by punishing completed murders, but that's cold comfort to victims and potential victims, and not particularly fair if the risk of victimhood is not uniform across the population.
ggg9990 8y ago
Most of the behavior that this article is criticizing is not a crime in the US. Yes, “I’ll come to your house and murder your family” is a crime, but “I hope you die alone of cancer” is not, nor is “People like this should be stabbed in the face.”
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- emiliobumachar 8y ago
  Keyword is "most". All we'd need is a handful of well publicized arrests over a couple of years. I assume there's plenty of “I’ll come to your house and murder your family” or similar if one were to do a through search for it.
  - drb91 8y ago
    How would this dissuade people where it is legal? How do people distinguish between (subjective) humor and an actual threat where it’s illegal? Do they outlaw all jokes about killing?
    - rwmj 8y ago
      By common sense, and where that fails, the courts and jury system.
      - drb91 8y ago
        Wait people are dissuaded by common sense? I’m not sure i follow.
        rwmj 8y ago
        I was answering your second question.
        8y ago
dfee 8y ago
For the commenters who missed it, here’s the context: > People were trying to hack into his Facebook account, which was quickly disabled. The pages of his children were targeted. His wife began receiving phone calls with death threats, at all hours of the night. A petition that stated, “Chris Filardi is a disgrace and frankly does not deserve to breathe another breath,” was signed by 3,798 people.
- Crontab 8y ago
  This is why I don't do anything on the Internet under my real name. It is too easy to find yourself the target of a mob - especially in this day of easily offended SJWs.
  - fl0wenol 8y ago
    Agreed, and I do the same. But I bristle at the use of the term 'SJW', especially here. It's a dog-whistle of a term which has lost meaning unless you subscribe to a simplistic "us" vs "them" mentality about people on the Internet. Resist that.

aetherson 8y ago

It's protected speech (in the US) unless you can demonstrate that it's a "true threat," and not something that a reasonable reader would interpret as hyperbole. You'd probably have an uphill battle convincing a court that an online death threat is a "true threat." What percentage of them are acted on? How many decimal places do you have to go to before it doesn't round to 0? I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, please don't threaten people with death, even if you don't mean it, it's gross.

kolpa 8y ago
It doesn't matter what percentage of threats are acted upon, it matters what percentage of threatened people are harmed. I think conspiracy laws should apply here, where an "online lynch mob" ends up with one person committing a physical act in line with the mob's speech. If 100 people perpetrate a crime together -- even if loosely coupled mob, it's not less of a crime than if 1 person perpetrates it alone.
- aetherson 8y ago
  I can't tell what exactly you're calling for, but I can't think of any interpretation that doesn't seem like an incredibly bad idea. Making a person face criminal liability for making a negative comment because a third party, that your defendant has never met, committed an actual crime is farcically orwellian.
  - kolpa 8y ago
    In the USA it is historically and modernly generally considered a good idea. The legal term is "Fighting words" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words
    - aetherson 8y ago
      "At most, [the fighting words doctrine] allows punishment of face-to-face insults, directed at a particular person and likely to cause an immediate fight." https://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/make-no-law/2018/01/fighting-words/ https://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/make-no-law/2018/01/fi... That's a podcast with transcript from a free speech lawyer discussing the fighting words doctrine. Again, you're super unclear about the exact scenario you're imagining. But the only way that you could be punished for saying "I am going to murder you" under the fighting words doctrine (instead of the true threat doctrine) is if you said it face-to-face with someone and that person was likely to punch you for it. It is certainly not the case that if you made some statement like "I think you should die in a fire," online and then someone else that you had never interacted with attacked the person that you spoke to, that the fighting words doctrine would have anything whatsoever to do with any case against you.
      - kolpa 8y ago
        I may have conflated "fighting words" with "imminent lawless action". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio
        aetherson 8y ago
        Look, why don't you actually try describing some scenario and what you think ought to be the legal result of that scenario. There are almost no internet comment threads that can plausibly be described as inciting imminent lawless action.
        int_19h 8y ago
        For "imminent" to apply, the person posting the comment would have to be reasonably believing (or should have been reasonably believing) that said comment would cause the action. Do you seriously think this bar can be met for a random Internet comment like that? Especially given the specific example prompting the court case that you are citing?

throwaway76543 8y ago

Many internet death threats are not "true threats" and are indeed protected speech. Not all, but a surprising amount of it is. You can read more starting with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elonis_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elonis_v._United_States

kolpa 8y ago
This is a subtle point. The court ruled that you can't be guilty of threatening to hurt someone unless you actually intend to hurt them. But if you play in the grey space, by intending to create fear of harm without (in the vein of It's Always Sunny's infamous "because of the implication" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yUafzOXHPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yUafzOXHPE), that's apparently legal. Presumably because to some extent the law is not intended to directly prevent crime, but only to deter crime by punishing it. At a social level, it may make sense to "sacrifice" a few people to murder in order to maintain a free society while detering most murders by punishing completed murders, but that's cold comfort to victims and potential victims, and not particularly fair if the risk of victimhood is not uniform across the population.

ggg9990 8y ago

Most of the behavior that this article is criticizing is not a crime in the US. Yes, “I’ll come to your house and murder your family” is a crime, but “I hope you die alone of cancer” is not, nor is “People like this should be stabbed in the face.”

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
emiliobumachar 8y ago
Keyword is "most". All we'd need is a handful of well publicized arrests over a couple of years. I assume there's plenty of “I’ll come to your house and murder your family” or similar if one were to do a through search for it.
- drb91 8y ago
  How would this dissuade people where it is legal? How do people distinguish between (subjective) humor and an actual threat where it’s illegal? Do they outlaw all jokes about killing?
  - rwmj 8y ago
    By common sense, and where that fails, the courts and jury system.
    - drb91 8y ago
      Wait people are dissuaded by common sense? I’m not sure i follow.
      - rwmj 8y ago
        I was answering your second question.
        8y ago

dfee 8y ago

For the commenters who missed it, here’s the context: > People were trying to hack into his Facebook account, which was quickly disabled. The pages of his children were targeted. His wife began receiving phone calls with death threats, at all hours of the night. A petition that stated, “Chris Filardi is a disgrace and frankly does not deserve to breathe another breath,” was signed by 3,798 people.

Crontab 8y ago
This is why I don't do anything on the Internet under my real name. It is too easy to find yourself the target of a mob - especially in this day of easily offended SJWs.
- fl0wenol 8y ago
  Agreed, and I do the same. But I bristle at the use of the term 'SJW', especially here. It's a dog-whistle of a term which has lost meaning unless you subscribe to a simplistic "us" vs "them" mentality about people on the Internet. Resist that.