People pretending to be professionals online should they be prosecuted ?

[Nothappyatwork]

A woman locally to us has just been fined and given community service for pretending to be a medic at the scene of an accident where she cut off somebody’s clothes completely unnecessarily God knows what she was thinking but it got me thinking around people that give advice on Mumsnet for example you see it quite regularly, I am a lawyer, I am a social worker, I am a doctor and then they give advice that quite clearly demonstrates that actually they’re not. If they cause harm in people‘s lives should they be traced and prosecuted ?

There's a longterm antivax poster the other day who claimed to have a science phd , yet they dont understand graphs and for years have misinterpreted graphs in their post. If they really understood what they were talking about, they would know that their interpretation could not possible be correct
Another long term poster who claims to have multiple degrees from Oxbridge, yet claims to have read papers but miss out very basic information ie who was allowed to give evidence in court case. They get their infor from antivax websites not from the actual paper

A few years ago there was someone on here who claimed to be a nurse, she had the word nurse in her username and would regularly give out medical advice. She was a prolific poster and easily recognised.

One day someone posted a thread about becoming a student nurse and something about the logistics- there was a name change fail and it was person who claimed to be a nurse. It was a proper shit show.

ArianaDumbledore I have heard some horror stories of ‘advice’ from SEN advocates too. The increasing prominence of ‘advocates’ who haven’t got a good grasp of the law and procedures is fast becoming a problem, especially when even though their fees are less than a solicitor or direct access barrister it is often not an insignificant amount of money for, usually desperate, parents.

Not online, but I’ll never forget the fellow juror who was convinced a young girl was lying about her father molesting her because he was an expert on body language. When I pressed him on his qualifications it came to light he had read some book on facial expressions. Fellow jurors believed that was enough to qualify his assertions. Terrifying. Just terrifying.