Facebook slur victim awarded damages
A tip for anyone on Facebook thinking of badmouthing a friend: don’t, because if you do you’re liable to get in some rather serious trouble. Especially if you post a child porn picture to the site.
According to Metro, in November 2008 a man named Jeremiah Barber posted a picture of child abuse to the Facebook profile of Raymond Bryce along with the line, “Ray, you like the kids and you are gay so I bet you love this picture, Ha ha.” So far, so lame.
The picture remained up for almost 24 hours, in which time up to 800 people could see the highly-offensive image. Unsurprisingly, Bryce complained to the police, and Barber was sentenced to 150 hours of community service. And he’s now had to pay £10,000 ($17,000) in damages over the incident.
Dr Ian Brown, from the Oxford Internet Institute, said:
This is worse in some ways than putting offensive posters on lamp posts because it’s going directly to your friends.
This does sound like an absolute nightmare. And it’s a scary thought that something done on a social network could result in someone being thought of as a pedophile. So much for friendship.
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