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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  3768 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: SCOTUS will finally hear a case on whether comments made on social media constitute threats

free speech





thenewgreen  ·  3768 days ago  ·  link  ·  

This is a really interesting case, I"m glad you posted this. What's your take on it?

    I wonder how many of the nine justices have ever been to facebook.com?
-That there is a great question. It's going to be increasingly difficult for SCOTUS to rule on cases involving technology that we all see as ubiquitous and they likely don't even use.

For many of them, I would guess that they see the Internet as a tool, whereas increasingly the population sees it as a "place."

We are living in some extremely interesting times.

user-inactivated  ·  3768 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Common sense. Case by case basis. Sometimes telling someone you're going to kill them online is a threat, sometimes it's bullshit (although still possibly prosecutable as harassment, just not assault).

thenewgreen  ·  3768 days ago  ·  link  ·  

How do you differentiate the bullshit from the legitimate threat?

user-inactivated  ·  3768 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That's the judge or jury's job.

I hope they will err toward very stringently disallowing people from saying hateful and stupid things on the internet (especially social media, which is more personal than a message board), but then I don't really give a damn about the insane obsession with free speech.

EDIT: incidentally, there are currently guidelines in place for differentiating threats and non-threats, because various legal questions already turn on that issue. (Presidential threats and so on.) I'm not sure if those rules are any good, but the procedural precedent is there.