To feel sorry for this woman?

[Mammanat222]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2781377/BREAKING-NEWS-Internet-troll-targeted-McCanns-dead-hotel-room-days-fleeing-home.html

OK so her hobby of internet trolling (and her subjects!!) was a bit dodgy BUT I cannot help to feel quite sorry for how she was treated??

AIBU

'Thank crikey MNers are not so identifiable. There are some on here who would struggle to be so robust when confronted in real life.'

But I suspect that a lot of MN regulars would be identifiable to a suitably motivated journalist willing to do some digging. People really shouldn't post on public forums/social media sites under a mistaken assumption of anonymity.

OH FFS.
Some people here are SERIOUSLY lacking in compassion. There are nasty, judgemental, small-minded idiots in the world.
Particularly the idiot who posted tedious crap about how cowardly and selfish they think suicide is. I lost a friend to suicide. Hope you're happy now.
This is NOT the same as the recent case of the guy being jailed for rape threats, which actually were deliberately, coldly and maliciously intended to harm the victim. This is the case of a woman who was clearly mentally unwell, and vulnerable. I doubt she really knew what she was doing. Is she not a human being, too? Do we lose our humanity and rights for doing one wrong thing?
She certainly didn't deserve to be hounded by the vile press.
Glass houses, stones.
As Ghandhi said, an eye for an eye' would mean everyone in the world was blind.

Showing no compassion for someone and bombarding them with 50 accusation/intimidating texts a day are surely very different things?

You can believe what you like privately, but when you harasses or stalk people online that's very different - (NB I'm not sure that was what she was doing)

Sorry, I don't know if she was continually doorstepped, but someone said it was continually shown and I must have misread.

Still, that's a massive headfuck. Can you imagine? You get pissed and mouth off and all of a sudden sky news are on your doorstep and you are played on a loop?

I am not saying she was right, but would any court hand down a sentence like that? Some cases get that, but only because of the circumstances of the case or because of the news cycle. But this wasn't even a case!

I think what she did was absolutely horrifying, don't get me wrong.

Yes, the legal system do get the wrong person sometimes. That isn't a reason to not bother trying and let any old agency determine the guilty or decide how they should be treated. Doctors often get it wrong, but I won't take that to mean we might as well go to the barber shop for a diagnosis.

This particular woman may have admitted she had done this, but by saying you are comfortable with the way the media handled this, you're condoning a method that could also be used against, and severely damage, the wrongly accused.

Petite you are right about the media libel of the McCanns. Are we going to hand over the responsibility to investigate and punish crime to the same people who the McCanns themselves have been led to sue? Media empires are not reliable. One minute they libel the McCanns, next minute they hound someone for libelling the McCanns - they just want a story.

This woman absolutely should have faced severe consequences for what she did, so should all the vicious trolls out there, I just would have liked to have seen those consequences administered with a great deal more care.

I don't agree with media harassing people for whatever reason, but in this particular case I doubt the outcome would have been different. She was going to face charges and most likely be convicted. She would have ended up in the news anyway at that time. Would she have been able to cope better then? Who knows, I doubt it. I feel sorry for her family, but she has suffered the consequences of her own malice.

I have not seen any claim about her sending texts to the McCanns other than in an opinion article in the Daily Mirror (oh the irony!!). I know it doesn't make much difference in a way, but just wondered if that has been confirmed.

Who's to say she committed suicide just because of this. We will never know what really went on in her mind. Her actions were highly unpleasant and thoughtless. No one is to blame for her suicide. She clearly had demons of some sort causing issues.

No, we can't know the full cause, although this seems likely to have been some kind of trigger. Even if this were not the cause though, it wouldn't make the way this was handled right.

If you would be humiliated and suicidal that things you write online about another person were made public then you possibly shouldn't share on a public forum - if it were private messages that is one thing, but it is a public forum and you are still responsible for what you write - to hound people from behind a internet username is cowardly.

Obviously it is sad but her trolling could have tipped one of the McCann family to suicide - and I imagine that they would more likely be emotionally fragile than she. She may not have had a legal case to answer but she did morally though perhaps in a less public manner (although she didn't give 2 hoots about the public forum on which she carried out her trollery - quite happy to publically do that)

YANBU OP

A woman is dead.

Her 'crime' was trolling, not actual violence.

Some people seem to have lost their sense of proportion somewhat.

What a terrible mess. More mess. More grief. For what?

I think people are under the impression that all the tweets shown on Sky news and in the newspapers are from this woman.
They certainly tried to give that impression, but the only tweet with her name on it was the one that said she hoped the McCanns would "suffer for the rest of their miserable lives".
Very unpleasant, but hardly threatening, or even directed at the McCanns.
I don't think she could have been prosecuted for this tweet.

ONE tweet!?

So why were Sky doorstepping her rather than other offenders?

Low hanging fruit?

I am guessing this one person was doorstepped because they knew who she was and not some others?

Or maybe they just wanted a good story? Well they certainly got it!

I'm disgusted at some of the comments on here. This woman is a mother of two children, to proclaim it as "Karma" is the fucking lowest of the low, you people truly are as heartless and vile as you say this woman was.

Please also bare in mind that the McCann's are not on Twitter, making it impossible to message them directly. Therefore I'm not quite sure how this comes under the umbrella of harassment and cyber bullying? She was airing her opinions, opinions that I have to say are shared by a lot of people. Type the #McCann hashtag and you'll see that others are saying far worse and have been doing so for years. Why she was targeted by Sky News I don't know?

YANBU - I posted this in the previous topic on this, my opinion hasn't changed:

"Firstly, I feel like Sky News is completely out of order on this issue.

People post things online that they would never in a million years say in real life, or think in real life but never actually say out loud. Social media allows us to say what is on our mind in the heat of the moment. All with mostly complete anonymity.

You never know who you are talking to on social media and on internet forums. You don't know their social background, their emotional profile, their mental state - you can think you have a fair idea but be totally wrong.

People are abusive, aggressive, judgmental and nasty to each other on Mumsnet, social media, in real life - difference is, on forums and social media, people's views are recorded.

That doesn't mean people should be able to get away with doing whatever they want - that's what the police are for.

But it should not be the role of the media to track down, try and identify people from their online profiles, turn up at their doorstep and harass them for an interview. This lady was not convicted of any wrongdoing whatsoever, yet she was publicly identified, judged and eventually she potentially took her own life as a result of it.

Secondly, the media don't know her mental state - she could have had depression or some other mental health issue that needed addressing. No-one knows.

Thirdly, this sets an unacceptable precedent for invading people's online privacy. As I stated in the previous thread, one of the users there I felt was unnecessarily rude to another poster. Using her Mumsnet username, I potentially found her linkedin account, Amazon account etc..

Now these accounts may not be hers, but what if I went to the media now complaining about online bullying. The media to go to that persons home and interview them on their doorstep? What if that person with the same username on Linkedin wasn't our Mumsnet user? This brings up plentiful opportunities for miscarriage of justice.

Finally, it also raises lots of questions about people determined to create their own 'justice'. So some online users took offense to this ladies comments and went to great depths to find out who she was in real life. Is that right?

This is about more than this woman's death, there is an important discussion to be had about online privacy and the role of the media."

she posted many tweets, not one.

I can't find a decent summary of what she tweeted Nancy

Nancy, I cant find her tweets. Can you tell us exactly what she said please?

From what I can gather the report given to the police had the names of around 40 trolls from Twitter and the internet in general. she was one of them.
she seems to have been credited with sending 'dozens' of messages.

I found a link to loads of her tweets, the ones I read seemed to be discussion of her opinions on the case, I couldn't see any threats, but I certainly didn't read them all.

I did see that the journalist who doorstepped her was part of the conversations I read.

greptweet.com/u/sweepyface/sweepyface.txt