UK's Chief Troll Hunter Targets Doxxing, Virtual Mobbing, and Nasty Images (arstechnica.co.uk)

Some bad news for trollers on the internet who use sophisticated techniques to hurl abuses at others. The UK's top prosecutor has warned that they are introducing new regulations to take these matters carefully and punish offenders with jail time. From an ArsTechnica report:New guidelines have been released by the Crown Prosecution Service to help cops in England and Wales determine whether charges -- under part 2, section 44 of the 2007 Serious Crime Act -- should be brought against people who use social media to encourage others to harass folk online. Over the past four years the CPS has repeatedly tweaked its guidelines on offensive behaviour on social media sites. The latest overhaul, among other things, addresses doxxing, where a person's personal information such as bank details or home address are published online; violence against women and girls such as "baiting" -- which labels someone as sexually promiscuous and can include the use of humiliating photoshopped images; and online harassment campaigns that encourage the use of derogatory hashtags. "Social media can be used to educate, entertain, and enlighten but there are also people who use it to bully, intimidate, and harass," said director of public prosecutions Alison Saunders. "Ignorance is not a defence and perceived anonymity is not an escape. Those who commit these acts, or encourage others to do the same, can and will be prosecuted."

Comments

Re:Selective enforcement

[meta-monkey]

In the early days of slavery in the American colonies the plantation owners treated white indentured servants and black slaves equally horribly. Realizing they had more in common and little to lose, the poor whites and blacks would work together to escape. So the plantation owners started treating whites a little bit better than blacks and punishing whites who helped blacks. This kept the poor whites and poor blacks at odds instead of uniting against the rich whites.

It's the same thing today, just now the protected classes are the immigrants and women instead of whites and men. At some time in the future I'm sure it'll flip to something else, whatever is necessary to keep the peasants fighting among themselves.