With the way social media is set
up today people are able to express themselves and post their opinions in
numerous places. But with this freedom
are people responsible for what they say?
There are a growing number of libel cases relating to internet and
social media. How are people using these
social media outlets and are they abusing these open forums of
communication? There are two types of
defamation; libel and slander. Libel is
written defamation and slander is spoken or verbal defamation. Like we discussed in class social media is
not private what so ever. We are 100%
responsible for what we say online or in social media networks. What constitutes online defamation is the
publication of false statements that can injure someone’s reputation. Though, if the statement is true then the
posting/comment cannot be deemed as libel.
For example if a customer reviews a restaurant and says “don’t go here
because there is a cockroach infestation”.
If this is true then it is not libel.
In class we also discussed examples of teachers on Facebook getting
fired over pictures they uploaded, employees getting fired over complaints
about the job, and students getting suspended from school for comments they
made about teachers or the principal.
Just because we cannot see the person or group we are talking to doesn’t
mean there aren’t consequences to what we say.
In this past year Penn State has had two major incidents with online
defamation in which both incidents have resulted in the police getting
involved. The first example, was a comment on yik yak. Yik yak is basically the same concept as
Twitter but anonymous. But as we learned
in the fall semester it is not quite anonymous.
A user on yik yak posted a yak threatening to shoot up the Hub. Other users on the application reported the
yak to the police and the police tracked the comment to the users and phone who
was later caught and arrested. In this
case the comment was libel because they specifically threatened to harm a group
of people and a specific location. The
second example is the KDR private Facebook page with postings of which included
nude, inappropriate photos of women posing or unconscious. The members of this fraternity completely
violated the privacy of these women. As
these incidents apply to class, we have to understand that everything we put up
on the Internet is not 100% private.
Threatening the lives of people is completely wrong morally and people
should be held libel for saying these type of things. In the other case the women who were
exposed on the Internet should be awake up call for other women to be cautious
to who they send photos to or don’t ever send them. We live in a very
social technology oriented society and we now need to be very careful of what
we post, send, or upload to the Internet, because there is no such thing as
privacy on the Internet.
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