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> "Threats of death have no place in convincing someone." What I still don't understand is how we got to the point where it's not considered straight up illega

> "Threats of death have no place in convincing someone." What I still don't understand is how we got to the point where it's not considered straight up illegal (like it used to be at one time in the not so distant past). As recently as my own childhood (mere single-digit decades ago) vocalizing a death threat aloud with any sort of seriousness could get you in a mess of trouble with the law, and putting it in print could get you a night in jail to think about it at the very least.

jfengel 5y ago
That's just it. It's not in print. Print means that you were in a place at a time, and you can be tracked. On the Internet, you could be anywhere in the world. It's hard to track you. Not that hard, since most people don't even try to cover their tracks, but it's out of the hands of local police, and it's way, way, way off the radar of the FBI. Unless you're a politician or perhaps a major celebrity, they don't even bother. They'll just assume that it's some rando in the middle of nowhere who didn't mean it, doesn't know where you are, and are content to just issue the threat. And 99.99% of the time, they're right. Comforting, huh? It is illegal. And I personally think that if the FBI started taking these seriously, the number would drop substantially. Probably not enough to make the Internet a less bad place, but I'd be curious to see if it helped. I think that the anonymous death and rape threats are the core of all of the rest of the hostility, making it seem reasonable to merely use abusive language. But I doubt we'll ever find out.
- blooalien 5y ago
  By "print" I meant putting the words down in a more tangible and provable medium than simply saying the words aloud, which if only heard by one person, is easily enough deniable. Your word against theirs. Printed threats were took more seriously by law enforcement when I was young because those words didn't vanish into the ether the moment you were done with them. They stayed where they were placed (on paper usually) and were therefore usable as evidence, same as recorded (video or audio) threats. As to tracking the perpetrator, in some cases it's exceedingly hard to trace them down online, but in many of these types of cases, the person or persons making these types of threats make little to zero efforts to cover their tracks (of which there are many on the modern Internet), and would be child's play for law enforcement to trace down, especially with even the smallest bit of cooperation from ISPs. That having been said, I'm actually against wholesale spying on the entire userbase by ISPs, even though many of them are guilty of that already, but when someone reports a crime to them that involves actual risk to the safety of others, turning over user records for the violator (easily determined who by simple time/date matching in the logs) isn't going too far really, I would think? I dunno. Maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps I just need to accept that everything bad in the world is only gonna get worse no matter what anyone does or says about it. It's so hard to tell anymore from day to day…
  - jfengel 5y ago
    I agree with you. A tiny bit of effort could potentially have a large knock-on effect. It's certainly worth trying. I'm not surprised that they don't. But I really think they should.

jfengel 5y ago

That's just it. It's not in print. Print means that you were in a place at a time, and you can be tracked. On the Internet, you could be anywhere in the world. It's hard to track you. Not that hard, since most people don't even try to cover their tracks, but it's out of the hands of local police, and it's way, way, way off the radar of the FBI. Unless you're a politician or perhaps a major celebrity, they don't even bother. They'll just assume that it's some rando in the middle of nowhere who didn't mean it, doesn't know where you are, and are content to just issue the threat. And 99.99% of the time, they're right. Comforting, huh? It is illegal. And I personally think that if the FBI started taking these seriously, the number would drop substantially. Probably not enough to make the Internet a less bad place, but I'd be curious to see if it helped. I think that the anonymous death and rape threats are the core of all of the rest of the hostility, making it seem reasonable to merely use abusive language. But I doubt we'll ever find out.

blooalien 5y ago
By "print" I meant putting the words down in a more tangible and provable medium than simply saying the words aloud, which if only heard by one person, is easily enough deniable. Your word against theirs. Printed threats were took more seriously by law enforcement when I was young because those words didn't vanish into the ether the moment you were done with them. They stayed where they were placed (on paper usually) and were therefore usable as evidence, same as recorded (video or audio) threats. As to tracking the perpetrator, in some cases it's exceedingly hard to trace them down online, but in many of these types of cases, the person or persons making these types of threats make little to zero efforts to cover their tracks (of which there are many on the modern Internet), and would be child's play for law enforcement to trace down, especially with even the smallest bit of cooperation from ISPs. That having been said, I'm actually against wholesale spying on the entire userbase by ISPs, even though many of them are guilty of that already, but when someone reports a crime to them that involves actual risk to the safety of others, turning over user records for the violator (easily determined who by simple time/date matching in the logs) isn't going too far really, I would think? I dunno. Maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps I just need to accept that everything bad in the world is only gonna get worse no matter what anyone does or says about it. It's so hard to tell anymore from day to day…
- jfengel 5y ago
  I agree with you. A tiny bit of effort could potentially have a large knock-on effect. It's certainly worth trying. I'm not surprised that they don't. But I really think they should.