Free and easy on Twitter? Think again!
Long time (or should that be long-suffering) readers of this blog will know that I have a Twitter account, which I use every so often to say where I am or what I am thinking or contemplating. I have to admit I spend very little time wondering whether someone might be upset at what I am writing. That may be a mistake: this year Twitter has come of age and has been the cause of at least two libel cases and a parliamentary apology.
One libel case has been taken by singer Courtney Love’s fashion designer, who felt aggrieved when Love said some not altogether nice things about her (as much as she could get into 140 characters) on Twitter. More bizarrely, a woman who complained on Twitter to her 32 or so ‘followers’ that her landlords were not concerned about the mold in her apartment in Illinois has been sued by the landlords, who are seeking $50,000 in damages. No kidding.
And as for the parliamentary apology, this was in Canada: one member of the Canadian House of Commons tweeted about another that he should ‘grow up, not out’ (the latter being a reference to his, er, alleged body shape), only to find that the outraged member was demanding an apology in parliament, which he got.
I think I’m going to have to go over my own twitterings again. Actually, I won’t, because as far as I know you can’t delete what you have written. Oh dear. If I have offended you, I didn’t mean to. Or maybe it wasn’t even me.
Explore posts in the same categories: culture, law, societyTags: Courtney Love, defamation, libel, Twitter
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November 25, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Phoenix gave you a gentle toasting in the last issue on this very subject. In reality gentler than you’ve given above. They tend to the same level of care when writing about Vincent Browne.
November 26, 2009 at 12:22 am
Actually, Vincent, what they brought up – rather curiously – was an occasion in 2003 when an email from me was accidentally misdirected. They made it appear as if this was recent, but it was ancient and long before Twitter…
November 26, 2009 at 8:36 am
‘Twill not be long before that will be past also.
But I could not care less about your habits of E-communication. Not I expect does anyone else, and I doubt that will be news to you. What I do not get is that snide contentless 7in of verbage. It’s missing six or so lines of pith.
November 25, 2009 at 9:49 pm
I like the proposed improvement on Twitter, called Flutter, based on the idea that 140 characters is too prolix:
More seriously (yes,its a joke) nothing will persuade me to either compose or read a tweet despite calls from some colleagues to do so. Although our new EU President, Van Rompuy, composes haikus which are presumably suitable for this medium.
November 26, 2009 at 12:28 am
Ah well, Kevin, then you are missing the announcements and short comments by quite a few economists: see e.g. http://twitter.com/dambisamoyo or http://twitter.com/MilkenInstitute or http://twitter.com/economistcafe.
November 26, 2009 at 8:36 am
Yes, I choose to. So much profoundity in so few characters, I don’t think I could cope.
November 26, 2009 at 9:46 am
This sounds like it should be compulsory reading for anybody with a keyboard or keypad:
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8981.html
Its a book by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger called “Delete: the Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age” (Princeton University Press)
And if you think its only your e-communications you need to worry about, think again! 35 years ago, before I knew what a computer was, I wrote an embarrassingly awful piece for a school magazine. Last month it came back to haunt me when somebody sent me a scanned image!
November 26, 2009 at 10:48 am
Hugh, I think we may all need to see that school magazine piece so we can offer an objective opinion on whether it really is awful…