Yesterday I read a news article about the number of threating tweets increasing. Daily, approximately 35000 threat tweets are send out, and 200 of them are so serious that the police has to come in action, which leads to a daily arrest. The police has been very busy with monitoring the Internet traffic, as 40 police agents work on this matter day and night. It is said it a social problem.
Social media makes it a lot easier for people to send out threats. Whereas before, they needed to have paper, write the letter, buy an envelop and then put it on the mail, now Twitter makes their lives much easier by enabling them to type a few words, click on send and done.
But really, how many of those so-called threat tweets are actually serious? It was said that the tweeters were usually teenagers, who have a hard time controlling their emotions. I am definitely glad that there are police agents who takes these things seriously, but I wonder if it is not just “blown up” most of the time. If a threat was serious, then why tweet it beforehand for the whole world to see, knowing you will get caught very soon, hence, what is the point of the threat tweet (it is not anonymous).
Overall, the police are doing a good job when it comes to monitoring tweets, but do you think there some ways to prevent this whole matter? You cannot actually stop someone from sending a (threat) tweet, but there must be some way to decrease this problem, especially if you see that 200 tweets per day are considered to be serious threats… any opinions? 🙂
source: http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2013/10/31/tweehonderd-serieuze-dreigtweets-per-dag/
Personally I believe that the people over time emotionally are the same as a few years ago but the way in which they can express themselves is expanded enormously. People can now express themselves in a face to face situation but also in the virtual world which feels much more anonymous. They can release themselves for a moment and tell the rest what they feel in a more private sphere. But the thing is indeed, that this is a sort of paradox, because once it is on the internet the whole world can see and enjoy your content.
I don´t believe that there is a way to prevent threat tweets from showing up but I do believe that in this society we can control each other much more than we could before. If someone is serious having emotional problems and express this on the internet we can maybe help this person. On the other hand it is also a way for teenagers to gain some unnecessary attention. Because we don´t know if it´s the first option or the second I think it is good to take it all very seriously. Monitoring may not prevent the show up of thread tweets but at least we can monitor who is responsible for it. And by that we might prevent people from feeling rejected by society.