To wonder why the twitter "troll" got arrested?

[VivaLeBeaver]

The one wo posted the nasty things about Tom Daley saying that Tom had let his father down by bot winning gold, etc.

I want to make it clear that I'm not defending him and think it was a horrible thing to say. But he didn't threaten Tom, etc so ow come it's an arrest able offence?

What's got me thinking is our village magazine. The village bobby has a column in the magazine and this month he has warned us all not to partake in malicious gossip on Facebook. He refers to the Tom Daley incident and warns us that malicious gossip could get us arrested. I don't do gossip on Facebook so I'm not expecting to be dragged away in cuffs but is it a crime? Threats of violence, racist insults, etc I can understand but not general bitchiness.

I would be interested to know the actual charges brought against him, I agree that they were awful things to say, however in this country we have freedom of speech and I don't want to see that change.

I wonder this too.
it does seem that you have to be famous for any action to be taken though.

Funnily enough, I work in a law firm in the City and we had this exact conversation. I'm on Twitter and see worse than that, but surely that's what the unfollow and block functions are for?

Our police don't have the resources to deal with this, and if the tweeter isn't in the UK there's nothing they can do about it anyway..

Lily - I think it was Under the Malicious Communications Act.

Apparently the police gave the bloke a harassment warning.

Which to me seems wrong. I thought harassment would involve actually harassing someone?

I wouldnt call a one off comment harassment.

what next, someone is mean to you on mn and they get arrested.

If someone walked up to you and made threats and/or was abusive, you could call the police.

If someone was abusive over the phone, the police could get involved.

If someone sent you nasty letters, the police could get involved.

The method of communication is irrelevant - if someone is being abusive or making threats then there is a point past which the police will get involved (if they are made aware of it).

"Freedom of speech" doesn't cover "freedom to attack people with words".

I think there's a fine balance. We need freedom of speech, but the internet has provided an opportunity for a minority of people to be very nasty to others in a way that was difficult before. That needs dealing with and using prosecution seems to be one of the few ways to do that. There have been lots of posts on here about Facebook bullying of teenagers and we need to make it clear that that isn't acceptable.

But he didn't make threats and whether he was abusive or not is questionable to be honest. He had an opinion which most people would disagree with but he didn't call Tom loads of names under the sun, etc.

There were death threats towards TD and he said he was going to "hunt him down." He also threatened to rape and kill anyone who opposed him.

Good point OP
Trills there was no attack (unless there's more to the story than in the OP). And if someone walked up to you in the street and said "You let your father down" the police would not get involved

ah x post. In that case, yes defintely.

Did you actually read all of his tweets before they were deleted? It was MULTIPLE comments, he then went on to apologise saying he didn't realise his dad was dead, then two minutes later started being abusive again.

There were a lot more tweets which he deleted and the press didn't report. I was following it. It was unpleasant to say the least

Really? I didn't know that. All the stuff I read at the time just reported a tweet that he'd sent that said " you let your father down"

I didn't know about threats to kill.

archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/rileyy69-aka-reece-of-weymouth-and.html

I haven't been following the story that closely, so I'm not sure what precisely was said (I don't particularly want to go and read nasty things)

I just wanted to make a general point about how Twitter is not special and "freedom of speech" is a silly thing to quote when someone has been given a warning for harassment, because you're not free to harass people.

He threatened to hunt him down and drown him. Maybe not serious threats but really really unpleasant reading

I was going to say that there was a lot more to it than just the one "you let your father down" comment - there were hopes that Tom would die too, that he should consider killing himself and various others. I didn't see/hear about the "hunt you down" ones but they were a lot more serious than just bitching about Tom's father.

I'm very glad he was arrested.

Also he's still threatening people and using abusive, racist and derogatory language
mobile.twitter.com/#!/Rileyy_69

He said he was going to find him and (something along the lines of) "drown you in a pool like the cocky twat you are."
The main one that was reported was about him letting his dad down - but that was because that was the one that TD retweeted. There were dozens of others sent directly to TD and also to other tweeters who then went on the "troll's" tweet feed and responded to him. Some of it was really nasty.

I thought the whole episode was awful.
I read a article on here afterwards as I had felt the whole thing was odd - the boy had been arrested in his flat where he lived alone.
He had posted initially not realising that Toms father had died. His comments were still unnecessary but he had made a mistake and tweeted an apology in which he said that he had also lost his mother.
But then Tom (understandably) tweeted a response nd the world went collectively nuts. He was battered by celebrities and taunted by every wanker who wants to stand as close as possible to a bit of drama.
He then responded with increasingly aggressive posts as he got more and more defensive and angry.

So an exchange between two teenagers, both who have lost a parent became a national story. And a sad, stupid teenager who was getting some buzz out of being a tosser on the Internet is vilified but a lot of people who should have known better.

When you actually read the tweets it becomes very clear why he was arrested

I didn't know he had made death threats either, if that is the case then he definitely deserves to be arrested. I think it is a fine line as to when police should get involved sometimes, threats and hate speech definitely but there are lots of things that get written on the internet that I would disagree with and lots of celebrities get tweets and facebook messages that are less than complimentary, I've seen people on twitter calling celebrities "cunts" "waste of skin" etc and on twitter putting the @celebritytwittername in the tweet to make sure they will see it, I've seen far too many cases of this for the police to get involved in all of them under harrasment laws.

I don't follow twitter but believe he had "form". Claire Balding commented that she knew the tweeter and had had to block him from her feed previously.