Anyone who has a facebook, which is the majority of the population, has seen a post or two that may have seemed skeptical. But how far is too far and at what lengths does freedom of speech apply? In my opinion, people are protected by freedom of speech until it threatens the lives of other people. When the constitution was being made and the first amendment was set in place to protect peoples basic freedoms, things such as facebook posts were not taken into consideration. Is a facebook post protected by freedom of speech? In an article I read, titled "Free Speech and Facebook", it questions the first amendment and challenges the Supreme Court to present a clear boundary on freedom of speech or the lack thereof.
The article I read was a story of a man using his facebook to vent in a threatening way. Him and his ex-wife had some quarrels and he wrote multiple posts about harming her, but he did it through rap lyrics. He even went as far as to post about performing a heinous school shooting he just didn't know which elementary school to pick since there were so many in his ten mile radius. When FBI officials caught attention of his postings, an agent showed up at his house and the man said, "the next time you knock, [I'll] touch the detonator in my pocket and we're all going boom.". After that bold move, the man was charged for violating a federal threat statute and sentenced to three years and eight months in prison. Currently, he is having his lawyers fight the case because the prosecutors did not have enough grounds at his trial to overcome freedom of speech. The government rejected the counter argument because they amount of fear the man caused to other people was enough.
Overall, I believe that the governments reasoning was cogent and the other mans reasoning had some fallacious factors.The governments reasoning was cogent because if everyone was allowed to post threatening things on facebook, no one would know if the person posting was planning on acting on their thoughts. However, I agree with the man that there does need to be more clarity on the subject of freedom of speech in the modern day. The mans reasoning was fallacious because he assumed he could post threatening things on facebook and threaten a federal agent and be protected by freedom of speech.
It sounds like his threats warrant a protection order for the public. I certainly don't want to stand next to him in line at the grocery store. He sounds like me a terrorist in the making and I want my government to help protect me from this sort of threat.
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