Alan S Reid: Tide is turning against internet trolls on social media

He recently commented on Twitter about Luis Suarez’s on-field actions in the match between Liverpool and Aston Villa. And then came the deeply offensive comments. At the time, Collymore’s Twitter account had more than half a million followers so it was not unreasonable to expect that some of those followers or retweeters of Collymore’s comments would end up saying something inappropriate.

Some of these tweets wanted to see him dead and others were derogatory about his race. This type of online behaviour has become all too common for Collymore.

Two years ago, Liam Stacey posted a range of offensive comments concerning the footballer Fabrice Muamba, after he had a heart attack on the football pitch.

Collymore decided to comment on Stacey’s behaviour, whereupon Collymore himself was subjected to a barrage of abuse. At the end of Stacey’s trial, in which he was found guilty of racially aggravated harassment under the Public Order Act 1986, Collymore once again found himself the object of online racial abuse.

Essentially, Collymore was now fair game and indeed he became part of the phenomenon of ‘snare a celebrity’ in which people try to be ever more offensive, controversial and abusive against a famous person online, in the hope that that famous figure will be so incensed that they retaliate online.

In this craze, the celebrity’s response is highly-prized and is forwarded to as many people as possible, especially where the response shows the celebrity in an unfavourable light.

Journalist Piers Morgan supported Collymore and tweeted that internet trolls should carry on doing it so that more evidence could be collected to give to the police for the purpose of building a criminal case against the perpetrators – and so the trolls began to target him too.

These events have highlighted, once again, the dangers of loose talk in the digital era. Your innermost thoughts, off the cuff remarks and unguarded views can all be put down instantly on a computer screen, smartphone or tablet and fired off into cyberspace, without a second thought.

The problem is that the internet and social media do not have such poor recollection – the internet remembers everything.

And permanent comments made online that are offensive, alarming, racist, sexist will attract criminal liability, in the exact same way if someone made such comments to your face.

The 1986 Public Order Act prohibits anyone from intentionally harassing, alarming or distressing another person. Similarly, the 1997 Protection from Harassment Act prohibits harassment and stalking.

The 1988 Malicious Communications Act applies 
to electronic communications of an indecent, grossly offensive or threatening nature which are designed to cause anxiety or distress to the recipient. 
The major criminal offence relevant to the case of Collymore is under the 2003 Communications Act – one of improperly using a public communications network.

This offence is made out 
when someone sends a message or material that is grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing.

Beyond the 2003 Act offence, prosecution guidance on taking action against online messages emphasises that tweets and other messages should only be criminalised where they are assessed to be credible threats of violence or damage to property or are specifically targeted towards individuals.

It is often argued that the internet is a lawless place, where the normal rules do not apply. That is not the case. The internet is actually regulated to a great extent and it is in no way an electronic frontier. The problem is more one of resources, investigation, evidence and effective control.

Website operators are the ones in the best position to identify the anonymous trolls but the law is slow to force social media to hand over the details of their users, for important reasons of democratic protection and freedom of speech.

However, the tide is turning and pressure is being brought to bear on social media sites to improve their abuse responses, by introducing abuse buttons and by legal means, forcing more moderators to be employed to filter out such messages and requiring a quicker take down process when messages have been flagged as inappropriate.

Twitter should become a safer place in the near future due to 
the increased attention being focused on social media.

For Stan Collymore, it may have come too late.

* Alan S. Reid is a senior lecturer in law at Sheffield Hallam University.