Phlegmatic

I think Q1 (serious threats) should be grounds for investigation, but I think it would be almost impossible to separate it definitively and legally from Q2 (humorous threats) and you are never going to get people to stop making those, nasty and unfunny though they are.

I don't think it's acceptable to rejoice at anyone's death, no matter how nasty.

Rejoice, by all means, at the election result, deposing of a tyrant, arrest of a criminal, sacking of a terrible boss. But death is not political, it is personal and human, and how often are people only stopped from doing bad things by death? Very rarely, I think : bad rulers, legislators and managers have usually become just vulnerable weak people, long before they die. I feel very strongly about this!

From:

I've had a "humorous" death threat against me, and I went out and bought a gun and spent money on an alarm system and changed my children's address.

A threat against your life is no laughing matter. In my opinion is should be as illegal as identity theft or malicious slander.

From:

But are you a celebrity / sportsman getting a death threat from someone who doesn't know you other than the reason for your public fame?

Saying " I hate that footballer, I'm going to cut his feet off" is pretty unpleasant, but I'm not sure it merits the cost of a police process. It seems more a case for some more extra-legal enforcement, such as the deletion of the account that made the threat.

From:

I think it is inappropriate for the person getting the death threats to be tasked with evaluating the mental health and credibility of the anonymous person who posted the threat.

Just as you don't joke about bombs in airports, you should not joke about murdering people.

Yes, I think it should be against the law.

From:

I didn't say that the person receiving the threat should evaluate the state of the sender.

I'm just not convinced it's possible or reasonable for the police to be expected to arrest all nasty but ultimately not very dangerous idiots and take all of them to court to be fined or imprisoned: I think that could divert resources from other areas that are more important.

From:

Would you agree, though, that if the person giving the threat is known to the person being threatened and also known to be mentally unstable that the police should take the threat seriously?

From:

Yes, of course. I think I would consider that to be one of the more important things that the police could usefully spend time on, instead of trying to enforce laws on people who say stupid things that they don't really mean, about people they don't know and will never meet.

From:

So who is in charge of evaluating whether the person making the threat is not a credible threat? Who evaluates whether they are personally known (even though the comment is anonymous) or whether they are in good mental health so *of course* they don't mean it?

From:

iainjcoleman.livejournal.com

Surely the question should be whether a reasonable person would feel threatened by the message, supposedly humorous or not? I mean, there's not much difference between

"I know where you live & I'm going to kill you & rape your kids"

and

"I know where you live & I'm going to kill you & rape your kids LOL",

but a world of difference from

"If Girls Aloud don't play Biology I'm gonna nuke the site from orbit!"

As for saying you would celebrate if some celebrity died, I would say the threshold for "appalling behaviour would be reached if you included their @twittername so that they saw it in their feed.

From:

"LOL" is clearly the new "Allegedly".

From:

I suspect more than half the people of my generation have said something about Mrs Thatcher's grave having a fitted dancefloor. If we added stuff like "I could kill the guy who wrote that stupid song" I think the number of people who have said that they would/could kill someone will rise to near 100%.

I think here we're in the field where normal social behaviour completely includes such statements, where it would not even be considered slightly shocking as part of a comedy act... but where the lack of social cues on twitter could lead it to be interpreted seriously.

If we have to have a police investigation into every death threat on twitter we're going to hire a lot more policemen. You'd have to be pretty daft to take these things seriously.

That said there would be a level of sustained threats/abuse where it would stray into a territory I would say should be illegal.

From:

I've seen that comment (about Thatcher) made even in the last couple of years. A frail old woman with dementia, whose daughter has to explain to her repeatedly that her beloved husband is dead. I don't care what her politics were or what she did, or even that she doesn't know: it's horrible.

World has enough hate in it without hating on sad sick old ladies. :-(

From:

I know this can seem reasonable but on closer inspection I find your moral philosophy extremely strange here.

Essentially, you don't seem to have objections to wishing ill on someone who is healthy and young. However, if that person becomes old and/or frail it is no longer acceptable. I'm afraid I find that really morally suspect. Why do we (or should we) stop hating someone because they happen to have become old or ill. Should we stop hating someone who is dead because they would now be old or ill had they lived. It makes no sense.

While I can see you can make an appealing case with sentiment like "World has enough hate in it without hating on sad sick old ladies." I don't think there's any actual consistency to this claim.

From:

king-pellinor.livejournal.com

That's not what I read Bunn as saying: I thought she was saying that wishing ill on people is pretty unpleasant anyway, but hard to distinguish from joking. Then she's said that's it's worse to kick someone who's down, which implies that if you're kicking anyone it's marginally better to kick someone who can at least understand what you're doing and respond appropriately.

I agree with that. Which may be because I'm reading my views into what Bunn's said, but I don't think so.

From:

It makes more sense that way. It's OK to hate someone but not if they're female/unwell/elderly doesn't make sense to me on inspection.

From:

eledonecirrhosa.livejournal.com

How do you tell a death threat from the common or garden phrase "I'll bloody kill [insert name of person who has annoyed you here]"?

"Kill" has been for aeons a synonym for "will express my extreme irritation at". Exactly the same way that "starving" is a synonym for "quite hungry and would like to eat something soon".

No-one rushes food aid convoys to places where people have said to/texted/tweeted their mates "I'm starving". Why should we rush the police to them when they say "I'll kill..."?

As to the celebrating celebrity/politicians' deaths - again it is hyperbole. Of the many thousands of people who said they'll celebrate Mrs Thatcher/Paris Hilton/Mr Blobby's death... most won't. They'll hear it on the news many years after they said it and think "Meh, whatever." No street parties, fireworks displays, etc.

The English language contains exaggeration for the sake of effect. Legislation will not alter this.

From:

I originally said "Yes" to the first one, but then changed it to "No", and then back to "Yes".

Because I don't think that it should be taken as a death threat - it's a public statement, being made from long distance. So I don't think of it as an actual death threat. I _do_ think of it as generally abusive behaviour though. And while I'm in favour of free speech, my limits are when it comes to deliberately setting out to make someone feel threatened.

When it comes to making jokes on Twitter about celebrities dying, I see there being a world of difference between "I'm going to laugh when Sting dies, the pompous arse" and "I'm going to laugh when @Sting dies, the pompous arse". The first will be seen by you and your followers/friends. The second is one where you've deliberately included the person you're joking about, and have thus turned a semi-public/semi-private conversation into an attack on someone. Thus, appalling behaviour.

From:

I think it's odd that people would be all down on a poster for being racist or sexually harassing in a joke, but murder in a joke is okay somehow?

No it's not. It's really not. It eggs on a culture of violence and makes people feel threatened to an extent that people (I'm one of them) quit positions of power rather than subject myself to death threats.

From:

I've heard a few people make the Sting/@Sting distinction but I really disagree there. The latter is merely providing the correct reference.

From:

I don't understand what you're saying there about "the correct reference". Could you try again in different language?

From:

Sorry, reference in the web sense. I'm writing something to appear on the web and I say "That BBC news article about guns this week" it would have been better had I given a URL. On twitter if I'm writing about that bloke Dave Turvey it would have been better if I had given an @ address.

From:

Except that and @ is not the same as a URL. A URL doesn't also forward on your blog post to the person it's referencing. Using @Sting in your tweet is the same as writing a blog post with a URL and then emailing it to the person you wrote it about. Hence, worse behaviour, IMHO.

From:

It allows that person to see the tweet easily yes. We can argue all day about which is the appropriate metaphor:
Is it like
1) insulting someone and then posting them a copy of the insult
or
2) posting a hostile webpage with a link to someone's web page so if they choose they can search for the incoming URL
or
3) posting a link to a livejournal post saying "this guys a fool" knowing they'll be hit by the pingback bot.

Really though, that's pretty unhelpful. It is what it is and I'm not sure trying to transfer known "good behaviour" from one context is helpful.

1) It's the correct way to provide a reference to that person on that system.
On the other hand:
2) It has the effect of alerting that person to the reference.

We trade that off differently.

If someone were insulting me on twitter and not using @ I'd think "Well, why are you hiding that from me you coward" as it's a deliberate attempt to conceal.

From:

I disiagree with your (1). I would say that "It is the correct way to provide a reference to a person who you also want to see your tweet."

But I don't think we can come to meaningful agreement on that.

I also don't expect people to tell me directly about every problem they have with my behaviour, or everything I do that's annoyed them, only the ones they consider worth it. People talk about other people all the time, and only occasionally is it worth trying to effect change/have a socially difficult conversation with them.

From:

I agree that in many social contexts we complain about a person and would not want that person to know. On twitter, however, unless it's a locked account, you are openly complaining to the whole world while deliberately not informing the person. So for me I would be more offended by someone omitting the @ than including it. It's just ill mannered.

From:

True, I can see that.

Damned modern technology and it's making social rules difficult!

From:

It may be that your rule will become the established social consensus as to "polite" as I've heard it from two different people in the public eye, questioned them on the subject and heard their rationale (similar to yours).
One was Mitch Benn, I can't remember the other, possibly Graham Linnehan (sp?).

From:

Well, I'm just aware that if I say "I like the new series by @Glinner" then I've just cluttered up his twitter feed and made it harder for him to see anything with actual content in it.

On the other hand, this is a problem only for famous people, and it's not like Twitter is a reliable communication method anyway.

From:

iainjcoleman.livejournal.com

If you're going to say nasty things about someone, it does make a difference whether or not you go that extra step to ensure they'll read it over their cornflakes.

From:

Well that depends if you're a "say things to my face not my back" type. I believe that there's no consensus there.

From:

I have heard many, many, people call Bono all sorts of names. If they'd also sent him a letter to tell him they'd been calling him names down the pub then that would start to cross into harrassing behaviour.

From:

iainjcoleman.livejournal.com

I would say it falls under the general principle of "no need to be a cunt about it".

From: