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/
