When the footballer Fabrice Muamba collapsed because of a cardiac arrest during a recent game most online fans were sending out messages of hope – pray for Muamba was a recurring message on Twitter at the time. But one young student at Swansea University, Liam Stacey, chose to send out abusive racist messages abusing the footballer just as he was fighting for his life.
Stacey was found guilty under the Racially Aggravated s4A Public order Act 1986 and was sentenced to 56 days in jail and his university told him to not bother coming back to complete his finals. So the messages we post on Twitter are not ephemeral. They do have meaning and can be treated as published words in the eye of the law.
But Twitter is still a free for all. Take a look at the profiles of many people where they state their company and job title. Often there is an extra line saying 'these are my personal views, not those of my employer'.
Really? But nobody has ever tested this in court and isn't it obvious that if you have announced on your profile who you work for then surely that company will have an interest in what you are publishing if it diverges far from what they would call their 'brand values'?
And what of the retweet dilemma? Imagine you work for an Israeli company and you notice a news story about academics trying to make 'Mein Kampf' available in Germany once again. You retweet the story because it is interesting then someone in your company asks why you are endorsing the wider availability for the works of Adolf Hitler.
Who is right? Does a retweet merely indicate that this is something interesting you want to share, or is it an implicit endorsement of what you are linking to?
None of this has been tested in court yet so I am sure the coming years are going to feature many more Liam Stacey's – lives ruined because of an ill-judged Tweet.
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