Trolling and Cyber Harassment: Contrasting Perspectives

Although author Danielle Keats Citron’s article “Free Speech Does Not Protect Cyber harassment” and author Vyshali Manivannan’s article “When “Trolling” Becomes an Umbrella Term” both are about “Trolling” on the internet. They both have different point of views but tie together very nicely. Author Manivannan describes trolling as “a set of diverse behaviors—everything from harmful efforts to destroy a target’s reputation to harmless pranks and serious political activity” which to me seems a bit too much of a technical but well explained term in my eyes. Author Citron stresses the importance of the law enforcement using those tools they have to track down individuals that are intentionally and maybe even non intentionally engaging in cyber

Citron talks about Zelda Williams, Robin William’s daughter, being cyber harassed after her fathers death. Robin Williams was a famous actor and comedian. He died in 2014 from suicide. It was a horrible time for his close family, friends and fans. People would send her horrible messages and photos with comments saying things like “her father would be “ashamed” of her”, attached with photos of dead bodies. How horrible and immature can people really be? They do this just to get a reaction out of these people. You have to be pretty sick in the head to find joy in doing this kind of action. This drove Zelda Williams to delete all of her social media accounts. She could not take the harassment

Give them consequences like deleting their accounts or parents taking away belongings of theirs. Take away something so important to them like their cell phones and computers. I do also agree with Citron that this should be included in parents talking to their kids about drunk driving or giving the talk about sex. Author Manivannan’s article “When “trolling” Becomes an Umbrella Term”, he uses such technical terms in describing the meaning and going to in depth about making the differences between what is harmful and not. I assume you have to do it that way when you start getting technical here with what should be against the law and what should be allowed as “Freedom of Speech”. However, I think it should be straight to the point. Trolling is trolling. Readers can learn to step back and think outside of the box. We may read these comments and think nothing of it because it has nothing to do with us or we can stand up and help prevent it from