Kentucky Bill: Wait an Hour Before Posting Injuries To Social Media (kentucky.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A Kentucky state representative is developing an unusual piece of legislation. It would impose a delay on people posting about an event on social media if the event resulted in serious injury. Users caught violating this law would face fines ranging from $20-$100. It wouldn't restrict media, victims, or first responders — just bystanders. Representative John Carney says, "It's purely my intent to get a discussion going out there, asking people to be more respectful about what they put on social media. We've had some incidents, including one in my community, and I'd hate for anyone to learn about the loss of a loved one through social media."

Opponents of the bill point out the difficulty in determining who qualifies as "media" in the age of social networks, not to mention the potential conflict with the First Amendment. Carney recognizes the difficulty, and says he doesn't intend to push the bill immediately, but notes that he's trying to solve a real problem. Tiger Robinson, a local public safety director, said, "There have been times we've been pulling bodies out of cars and these people are standing there, snapping pictures on their phones to post on Facebook. It's just not right."

Comments

it's a cultural problem, unfixable via tech or law

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a symptom of a deep cultural problem, and I don't think either law or technology is going to fix it. At best, it'll just be another "law nobody knows about" that can be used for selective enforcement.

This need to post every microscopic facet of one's life to Facebook is rather sick, even under less tragic circumstances than a traffic accident. It's something that's badly broken about our narcissistic culture. It's bad enough when it's one's own private data, but when it involves some other human being who didn't agree, and in fact may have just suffered either the worst day of their life, or the last day of their life, it's even worse. It's a symptom of lack of empathy for other human beings.

The only way I see to fix this is long term and cultural, not short term and legal.

Re:Law or morality?

[Penguinisto]

Sorry, dude - As long as it ain't false+defamatory or a false incitement to panic, the First Amendment says that bystanders can pretty much say whatever they want about whatever they see in public - whenever they want, even while it's still happening.

One would of course hope that bystanders would have enough decency to show at least a basic discretion about it, but if they don't the problem is with the bystanders, not the laws. Maybe try and gently promote a cultural shift that would give the desired outcome, but using the law as a cudgel to enforce discretion in such a public instance is the wrong way to go.

Re:First

[Opportunist]

That was less than an hour of that trainwreck of a story appearing, prepare to pay for that!

summary : Rep SAID he's trolling

[raymorris]

The fine summary at the top of this page says he doesn't intend to actually push the bill to pass and the representative says "It's purely my intent to get a discussion going out there, asking people to be more respectful ".

So yes, he's trying to get a discussion going, aka trolling. That appears to have worked because here we are discussing it.

Re:Law or morality?

[Dread_ed]

But a police officer would have a perfect reason to detain you if you recorded them beating or shooting someone. Of course they would ostensibly be working for the rights of the family of the person they mangled. You know, ensuring the video didn't get out before it was legal. But then the video gets erased, or the recording device disappears.

This is the last thing we need.