Do you think that harassment and assault comments on social media sites are worthy of the perpetrator facing criminal charges?

It'd have to be really extreme because in our touchy-feely culture, saying that a particular politician sucks could be viewed as threatening.

Chris wrote:

Do you think that harassment and assault comments on social media sites are worthy of the perpetrator facing criminal charges?

Possibly. If someone can be prosecuted for saying something threatening, why not for writing it? If you're that stupid to virtually say it to the world instead of one person, you kind of deserve what you get.

Alan Smithee wrote:

Possibly. If someone can be prosecuted for saying something threatening, why not for writing it? If you're that stupid to virtually say it to the world instead of one person, you kind of deserve what you get.

Absolutely.

It's a crime of prevention, they don't know if there is any intent to back up what is said, and let's face it, as many stupid comments are going around in cyber space, about 90% of the world ought to be arrested. I can't count how many times I had people PM me saying they were going to cut my stomach to ribbons, rape me, etc. and did anything happen? No. Would I have called the police if they kept up? No, why? Because I never believed there was any merit to any of them.

Depends on how extreme the harassment is. If someone goes out of their way to block the person who is harassing them, while that person goes out of their way to continue to do it under other names, locations, IP addresses and so forth, then perhaps. But it would need to be something that blatant. Just someone being an asshole in their comments isn't enough for charges, IMO.

No. Just block them. Harassing somebody in their personal email is the only time I could see going that route.