"Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Maryland and author of Hate Crimes in Cyberspace who has spent several years interviewing Valenti about online harassment, told Mic that Valenti has been getting routine threats sent to her inbox, cell phone and email for years.
Citron defined a criminal threat as a "credible threat that you'd be criminally responsible for," such a post or message that targets someone with clear intent to do physical harm. "It's not hypothetical or joking...[it's something like] a picture of a gun with a message saying 'bitch you're next,'" Citron said in a phone interview, citing an example she received the other day.
Citron is currently on Twitter's Safety Council and has also been working with the California Attorney General to beef up law enforcement's ability to combat online harassment. Yet despite official efforts by media companies and law enforcement, she fears targeted harassment is now more socially acceptable than ever — thanks, in part, to presidential candidate Donald Trump, who is notorious for his Twitter rants against public figures.
"What we're seeing is an unleashing, a mainstreaming of hate," she said.
Although Citron believes Twitter in particular is "committed" to preventing threats and other cybercrimes, the lack of recent data about the prevalence of online threats means it's impossible to know whether that commitment is having any nationwide impact.
"There are no statistics collected about [cyberstalking] on the federal level at all," Citron said. "There are about 30 to 50 [cyber stalking] threat prosecutions a year at the federal level, and that's just not a lot.""
- Date Published:07/28/2016
- Original Publication:Mic