The Palace has dragged the Royal family kicking and screaming into the 21st century by organising a Facebook page for the Queen. Whether they want to or not, they will embrace and love this new techonology. It will be a fantastic PR tool, and will prove to the seething masses that the Royal family are just like them. However, the person who had this bright idea hasn't been a regular Facebook user, or done much research about the internet. The internet is a fabulous encyclopedia of knowledge and information. However, it is also a repository of bile and hate and misinformed opinion (remember the bizarre outpouring of sympathy for Raoul Moat?) Quite predictably, within the first few days of its existence, the Queen of England's brand spanking new Facebook page has been hijacked by users leaving abusive messages about the Duchess of Cornwall.
Now, if I was thinking about leaving a message in a similar vein, I might think twice. Why? Because the Queen of England has security officers who keep an eye on her. MI5 and MI6 work for her - she's the ruler of all she surveys. You drop a nasty line to the Queen (who will never look at her Facebook page, let's be honest, it's just a PR coup) and before you know it, you've been traced through the Internet as a potential troublemaker. In this day and age, the feasibility of what might occur is enough to land a person in court. If a person is capable of venom towards a major royal personage, what's to stop them being a threat to THE ROYAL PERSON? A couple of nasty words to Prince Charles' second wife and the perps' feet won't touch the ground.
What am I trying to say? Think twice. For some reason, people get access to a computer and all of a sudden it's easy to say terrible things because it's a faceless confrontation. Ironically, once opinions are written down, it's harder to take them back. If I had been involved in the Raoul Moat fiasco, I would be investigating the background of every person who stuck up for his actions through the medium of the Internet. It's only the fact that the police are underfunded that is stopping them from doing this type of thing. They have to spend their money on fast cars and helicopter fuel in order to chase thieves and search for bodies.
Take responsibility for your cyberactions, people. We live in crazy times. Technology is advancing at an incredible rate. Some time in the near future, the Internet police will become a reality and then we could all be in trouble.
Now, if I was thinking about leaving a message in a similar vein, I might think twice. Why? Because the Queen of England has security officers who keep an eye on her. MI5 and MI6 work for her - she's the ruler of all she surveys. You drop a nasty line to the Queen (who will never look at her Facebook page, let's be honest, it's just a PR coup) and before you know it, you've been traced through the Internet as a potential troublemaker. In this day and age, the feasibility of what might occur is enough to land a person in court. If a person is capable of venom towards a major royal personage, what's to stop them being a threat to THE ROYAL PERSON? A couple of nasty words to Prince Charles' second wife and the perps' feet won't touch the ground.
What am I trying to say? Think twice. For some reason, people get access to a computer and all of a sudden it's easy to say terrible things because it's a faceless confrontation. Ironically, once opinions are written down, it's harder to take them back. If I had been involved in the Raoul Moat fiasco, I would be investigating the background of every person who stuck up for his actions through the medium of the Internet. It's only the fact that the police are underfunded that is stopping them from doing this type of thing. They have to spend their money on fast cars and helicopter fuel in order to chase thieves and search for bodies.
Take responsibility for your cyberactions, people. We live in crazy times. Technology is advancing at an incredible rate. Some time in the near future, the Internet police will become a reality and then we could all be in trouble.
No comments:
Post a Comment