Up until a few years ago i thought a Troll was a Norwegian myth on a par with Thor,Odin and the a-ah reunion,but since i have become au fait with the internet i have found out Troll is also the name given to any inadequate person who fires off the vilest of insults/threats to those in the news.This is a big story at the moment...
Trolling is not a new thing.Anyone in the public eye will tell you of the horrible letters they've received in the days before social media.Ex Radio One dj and sometimes TV presenter Nicky Campbell said this morning that just before his first child was due about fifteen years ago he got a letter hoping she was still born.So it's nothing new,What's new is that Trolling in the past took effort.Write a letter,address it and then post.Now all it requires is the ability to compose a Tweet and press send.
It's also much more noticeable than it was.Unless the recipient made any disgusting letter public we never got to hear about such things.Now anyone with access to Twitter or Facebook can see what's been posted by these Trolls.
The last few days has seen trolling in the spotlight due to both Caroline Criado Perez & Professor Mary Beard being bombarded with the vilest of Tweets about murder & rape.Their crime in bringing such a response from these sad individuals? Perez wants Jane Austen to be featured on a banknote and Mary Beard,well it appears that she received abuse simply for being Mary Beard( The Beard incident was quickly resolved when the Troll in question was threatened with his Mother being told via another Twitter user.)
Since these two incidents there have been calls for Twitter to have an "Abuse Button" whereby anyone who feels they're being abused by another Tweeter can report it to Twitter.I have to admit i find this a rather scary prospect.Not,i hasten to add because i am a Troll or support any Trolls in their stupidity,but because i know how ridiculously fragile some people on social media can be.Potentially every discussion on Twitter where two or more people disagree with each other will end with the "Abuse button" being pushed.You think i'm exaggerating? how many times do you hear of people ringing 999 cos' their bloody kettle's broken down or something equally pathetic? See? The twitter police would be inundated...
Talking of police,Twitter are not the police.Yes they have the right to police their own site but threats of violence,inc murder & rape are beyond their remit and should be left to the real police.Any threat of violence or racism is illegal and should be acted on accordingly.Not left to a Twitter button being operated to alert the server.There is a difference between abuse and illegality but sadly i doubt if many Tweeters will consider this in the heat of the moment.
If a Tweeter feels they have a valid case to get the police involved there are tried and trusted ways to go about it.indeed a few people have been successfully prosecuted using this method over the last 18 months.Anyway from what i can see Twitter is self policing.For every Troll aiming threats/abuse there are usually a hundred firing back in support.
Unfortunately the good side of twitter is not newsworthy.It's a truism that you can meet 99 perfectly nice people a day but it's the one arsehole met that you remember...
I hope Twitter does'nt cave into pressure from worldwide Governments to include this "Abuse button" To my mind it would be the first step to Twitter being regulated by an outside body...The death knell to to a phenomenon that has brightened up millions and millions of lives worldwide and afforded many a freedom
of self expression they never envisaged...
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