What about situations in which someone deliberately tries to cause misery to those suffering a loss? A prime example would be a family losing a child and someone just deliberately mocking and teasing them over it. What can you do? How can you prevent this? How should society act and take a stance about this? Obviously the "But free speech!"-camp doesn't even try to solve the problem at an individual level. What other options are there, apart from punishment of the perpetrator?
If you post something offensive and direct it at someone I'd say it's harassment and you could be taken to court.<p>Just saying something offensive though, undirected, should not be an offence. Or at least it should be a new category of offences not deserving of jail time.<p>I seriously doubt it the people who got jailed for certain tweets walked up to a policeman in the street and made the same comment they would get the same punishment.
Harassment laws should be enforced on twitter as much as anywhere else.<p>"Generally, criminal harassment entails intentionally targeting someone else with behavior that is meant to alarm, annoy, torment or terrorize them. Not all petty annoyances constitute harassment. Instead, most state laws require that the behavior cause a credible threat to the person's safety or their family's safety. - See more at: <a href="http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/harassment.html#sthash.pMyFFct5.dpuf"" rel="nofollow">http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/harassment.html...</a><p>"I'm going to rape/kill/etc you" should probably end up with you in front of a prosecutor in many states.
Well... Is it right to jail someone due to bullying? what if it's only verbal bullying? What if the bullying caused the victim to hurt him or herself? What if you threaten to kill somebody?<p>I don't know. I want to answer "no" to the title's question, but it seems more nuanced than that. I think the distinction of a targeted comment vs a "general" one is an important one to make.<p>I'm curious on what the law is for similar actions outside of social media..