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New Guidelines To Deal With Abusive Posts On Twitter, Facebook

by Bidita Debnath on Oct 14 2012 9:35 PM

Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, is in talks with lawyers, journalists and police about how to deal with the growing number of abusive tweets and posts on social networking sites.

 New Guidelines To Deal With Abusive Posts On Twitter, Facebook
Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, is in talks with lawyers, journalists and police about how to deal with the growing number of abusive tweets and posts on social networking sites.
A British government body charged with the prosecution of criminal offences, is formulating guidelines to help police know how to act over abusive comments on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

According to the Telegraph, police would prefer moderators from the sites themselves to delete comments that contain threats or constitute harassment.

Starmer is drawing up guidelines for the Crown Prosecution Service on the matter as two men were convicted this week alone for "trolling", the act of writing deliberately abusive comments on social networking sites.

Andy Trotter, who speaks for the Association of Chief Police Officers on media issues, told The Guardian newspaper that the 'guidance will assist the police to focus on the serious issues'.

"Many offensive comments are made every day on social media and guidance will assist the police to focus on the most serious matters," Trotter said.

According to the paper, Twitter has a free speech policy that means it does not interfere in disputes or restrict what it describes as "controversial content."

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A Facebook spokesman said the network was reliant on self-policing by its global network of one billion users.

Source-ANI


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