Twitter Has Gone Mad!

As the social media ambassador for Star Spreads and our resident public relations Guru, I think  I should comment on the numerous Twitter scandals that have come about over the last few months. People are being charged with inciting hatred, racist correspondence, and just generally being knob heads for no apparent reason.

Now, while I am against a lot of these tweets being sent to directly insult and offend people, I am equally unhappy about the fact that legal action with such a high level of judicial severity is being brought upon the aforementioned knob heads.   I’m not going to mention the names of some of these people, reason being that they don’t really deserve any notoriety for their idiotic comments, but I am of the opinion that there is no legitimate reason for them to receive such harsh punishments.

One case which I found particularly distressing was where a student was jailed for 56 days for posting offensive comments on Twitter about the on-pitch collapse of Bolton Wanderers footballer Fabrice Muamba.  He was arrested after his tweets were reported to police by Twitter users from across Britain, and the 21-year-old pleaded guilty to the Racially Aggravated Public Order Act.  While his comments were out of line, I think that in a society where we are told we have free speech, these kinds of draconian methods of punishment are a complete paradox. If he truly believed what he said in those tweets, then shame on him. People will know this young man for what he is,  a lowlife. But, sentencing him to nearly two months in prison which in turn got him expelled from university has ruined his life. What does this achieve? He was an idiot who had a few drinks and said stuff he shouldn’t have, we’ve all been guilty of saying something to our mates that is probably in bad taste and offensive to someone. But because he posted it on Twitter, it cannot be undone and is forced to pay a heavy price.

Not a big fan of this at all, we either have free speech or we don’t.