Facebook Taken to Court

The hot news right now in the social media world is the fact that Facebook are being taken to court by a UK woman in an attempt to uncover the real identities of anonymous users who used Facebook as a platform to attack her.

Nicola Brookes, a 45 year old Brighton resident is not against Facebook but all she wants is for Facebook to be made to comply and should this occur it would be the first of its kind within the UK. As part of Facebook being made to comply it will mean that fake users who create a profile in her name can be prosecuted.

Unfortunately she was accused of being a paedophile and had death threats directed at her on Facebook after she left a supportive comment on an X-Factor singer’s page.

“They started getting very personal, looking at my Facebook account, and talking about my appearance, my age and my illness. I hadn’t invited any of it, but they ganged together and started inciting a sort of public hatred of me,” Brookes told The Telegraph.

It got so bad that a fake profile was created in her name where by explicit messages were sent to young girls. Since this occurrence she has contacted the police as well as Facebook but no action has been taken.

“A criminal offence has been committed and the police should be involved hunting down these perpetrators, but no such assistance is provided,” she said.

Now with lawyers involved they have stated that the police target trolling cases only when a personality in the public eye is involved but they have defended themselves saying that unfortunately it is often difficult to trace anonymous activity back to the perpetrator.

Twitter users have in the past been brought to court for racist comments and inappropriate comments so why not on Facebook too?

A landmark case within the UK if this goes through the courts then it could have lasting effects on social media use in the country. This case is within the UK but within the US a similar case was brought to court and those involved received $14million in damages after abusive comments were posted onto a social forum.

As mentioned this will be the first of its kind within the UK but another recent case showed a judge rule that defendants could be summoned to court via Facebook. We may be entering a new era of Facebook users being served on the social network for their online conduct. Only time will tell what will happen but in regards to social media networks it is safe to say they are impacting many lives on a daily basis.