
FBI didn’t prosecute gamergate death threats, even with confessions - empath75
http://www.businessinsider.com/gamergate-fbi-file-2017-2/
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api
I don't think they took them seriously because video games, and because the
entire thing appeared so unbelievably silly from the outside. I wonder if they
might take them more seriously now?

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base698
[https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/05/cyberbll.html](https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/05/cyberbll.html)

Her article seems to be about what could be done to stop anonymous trolls from
terrorizing and threatening women. How about prosecuting them, since
terroristic threats is already a crime? Unfortunately, as Hess discovers, the
police don't care much about online stalking, which is consistent since they
don't care about IRL stalking either.

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marcoperaza
The Supreme Court has ruled that only _specific_ and _credible_ threats can be
prosecuted. Other threats, distasteful and disgusting as they are, are
protected as free speech. It's gonna be very hard to prove that an online
troll mouthing off constitutes a specific and credible threat. And the Justice
Department is usually not interested in borderline cases, both for efficiency
and out of fear of creating unfavorable precedent.

This is a country where you're allowed to burn someone in effigy and call for
their execution, protest soldiers' funerals and celebrate their death as
punishment for America tolerating gays, call for the overthrow of the US
government, hold up a mock severed-head of the President, publicly hope for
his assassination, etc. We take a rather expansive and absolutist view of free
speech.

~~~
manicdee
Does ringing a wonan’s Phone number and threatening rape, torture and murder
count as a death threat?

What about turning up on her doorstep and threatening her in person? At what
point does a threat become specific and credible?

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dogma1138
It varies on a case by case basis.

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dragonwriter
The FBI doesn't prosecute anything; it investigates, and the various US
Attorney's offices prosecute.

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JdeBP
And the article at hand, as opposed to the headline here, names the one of
those U.S. Attorney's Offices that decided not to prosecute.

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briandear
Off topic but, is it me or does Business Insider hijack the back button on
mobile? And why do websites forward to a country domain and not the actual
domain you are trying to visit?

What’s with this terrible web?

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arkona
> They used 4chan and 8chan — websites linked to the distribution of child
> pornography — to organise their movement, the FBI says.

What? 4chan is linked to child pornography? This paragraph alone is casting
serious doubts on the journalist’s objectivity and seriousness.

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aluhut
It's not? Since when?

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ericd
That's like saying the internet is associated with illegal drug distribution
because sometimes people buy drugs over it. It's true, but not representative.
That's not how most reasonable people would summarize it.

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michaelt

      That's not how most reasonable people would summarize it.
    

Only because a reasonable person would choose a more subjective statement, to
convey the full breadth of depravity a visitor could expect to find on 4chan.

I mean, you've also got the gore pics, the incitements to racial and political
violence, the fucked-up hentai, the homophobia, the raids on children's games,
and the incessant insistence that everyone kill themselves.

~~~
ericd
Or they might not take it so seriously, and describe it mostly as a bunch of
bored immature people trying to blow off steam and entertain themselves and
each other. And they take it too far somewhat frequently.

But maybe people at your middle school were more mature than at mine, and
never tried to gross each other out by tricking them into checking out this
really cool site called goatse.

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wildmusings
Can you imagine if the feds prosecuted every idiot who made a death threat
online? They have criteria for identifying particularly egregious cases worthy
of prosecution. One of the criteria, mandated by the Supreme Court of the
United States, is that the threat must be credible and specific. That's gonna
be impossible to prove for online trolls mouthing off.

When people play the “I’m getting death threats” card, put on your skeptic’s
hat and realize that _every_ person who arouses any controversy gets death
threats online. It’s awful but it’s inevitable. Ask yourself if they’re just
trying to deflect from whatever controversial thing they did in the first
place.

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dragonwriter
> Can you imagine if the feds prosecuted every idiot who made a death threat
> online?

I imagine there'd be a lot fewer death threats if there was _de facto_
official tolerance for them.

