Following a string of legal disputes over tweets, are we any clearer in finding out what we can and can’t say on Twitter?
It’s so easy to use Twitter as a place to vent your frustrations, whether it be about family members, colleagues, an organisation or the fact you’re having a generally crappy day. However, it’s just as easy to forget that everything you tweet is being sent out into the public domain for all the world to see.
There are obvious implications if you tweet something you shouldn’t. For example, if you regularly drop the f-bomb yet you’re looking for a serious role in politics you might be overlooked, or maybe you @ your friends with jokes far too much during office hours when you have 239,589 deadlines to meet.
However, there have been a few more serious consequences to tweets since the launch of Twitter back in 2006 and they certainly seem to be on the rise…
According to Rolling Stone, later this month Courtney Love will be going to trial in LA in the first high profile Twitter defamation case. She’s been in and out of the media since 2009 when she tweeted a barrage of insults at fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir calling her a “drug-pushing prostitute” among other things. Nice. It’s no surprise then that the designer filed a legal case against Love, claiming her outburst on Twitter has ruined her career and therefore qualifies as defamation.
However, it’s not just those in the public eye who have come face-to-face with the law over an erroneous tweet. Paul Chambers was convicted of menace this summer when he jokingly tweeted about blowing up an airport, which has since caused uproar among the Twitter community.
Similarly, American journalism lecturer Julie Posetti was threatened with legal action earlier this year when she tweeted comments made about publication The Australian at a conference which the editor argued qualify as defamation.
Many people feel that it’s terrible that the law can intervene in such cases, completely eradicating freedom of speech. However, I personally have mixed views and imagine it’d be a different story if I was the one being called a whore by Ms. Love across the Internet.
Some decisions have been made about what’s legal and what isn’t, but everything is still very much up in the air and until more of a precedent has been set in the courts and rules further set in stone, everyone needs to be wary of what they write online.
A key dispute seems to be about whether we should judge tweets as facts or opinions, so if you start laying into something or someone in future, at least have some evidence to back up your claims. Or just follow the rule taught to us all in nursery, if you haven’t got anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.
Becca Caddy is a BitchBuzz Tech columnist and freelance writer for Reputation Online, New Media Age’s spin-off publication You can follow her on Twitter @beccacaddy.
Image via Elizabeth Welsh’s Flickr.