umeu wrote:wardyb1 wrote:deleted_user wrote:I'm not disagreeing with the sentiment that blocking or walking away is a good thing to do. It definitely mitigates, yeah. I'm mostly disagreeing with the "how can cyber bullying even be real." Just the idea that one has to stop what they are doing because of another, that's power, and that's real, and it's a problem.
Agreed on that front that it is power and that the problem. Unfortunately I'd just say the world isn't all that great a place and unfortunately it isn't really fair. Bad people ruin good things for good people and we have to put up with it to a certain degree. I wish it was different but until it is what can we do? Anyway I think I get what your'e saying so I'll leave it there to semi-agree on the issue.
The only thing you can do is to actively try to make it different. Letting perpetrators get away with crimes has never lead to any change, so doing nothing at least is very obviously not the answer. Of course, the problem is, then what is?
Can you charge kids over minor or major forms of cyber bullying? Probably not until it gets super serious. So you go to the platform that they are being bullied on. Facebook/Twitter etc have previously shown to have rather arbertrary rules and often disregard legitimate claims while shutting down honest people. Maybe in a small community like this you could but if we are speaking generally then that's unlikely. And even then without IP blocking, people will just make new accounts, so once again this probably isn't a good solution. Ok so they are teenagers lets say, well maybe if they are at the same school we can try and punish the bullies through this avenue and engaging with them in person. However unless the punishment is extreme, in my experience I've only see this encourage the bullies as it gives them the attention they thrive on and as a result hurts the bullied even more.
As a society are we willing to not charge people with a crime per se but allow courts to block people from the internet or phones or whatever over cyber bullying? Once again it would probably need to a very serious case to go down that path and is probably much too authoritarian for my liking.