It is also a moderation issue. Certain behaviour should not be tolerated. I have seen it happen in a group that I am in and lack of moderation was part of the problem. There are certain laws, rules and regulations in the real world. So things should be no different in the cyber world.

I do agree with that, moderation should be much stricter on some sites, however in the real world, such as school and the like, moderating bullying has proven time and again to be difficult and near impossible to be effective.

In regard to John Lawless’ comments re moderation; its not that difficult. As a user of VHI web forums/discussion pages, I’m quite accustomed to being moderated. For example certain words or phrases are ‘flagged’ and your post will not appear until the flagged words have been approved by a moderator. Word like “grape” (because it contains the word “rape”) will stop your post, as will profanities, names of people, names of shops. Also the word “nightmare” because it contains “htm” as in “html”. When your post does appear, the ‘offending’ words/letters within a word or phrases are replaced with asterisks. The site is also patrolled by moderators 24/7 to ensure everyone is ok, and that’s a site predominantly used by adults, for adults! It’s quite easily done really when the company providing the service is willing to employ a few extra people to act as moderators to monitor the site. Sure I agree its people that write these hateful things and ultimately force a naieve/fragile mind to an early grave, by their own hand BUT any person worth their salt would at least attempt to stop this from happening, where his site is the only tangible link to two suicides so far.

@Trish Prendiville The words sledgehammer and nut spring to mind. Those type of automated filters are cumbersome and, as you have already pointed out by way of example, catch many completely innocent words. It is an inelegant solution that really does not work particularly on forums used by teens who simply use text speak (drop a vowel here, add a space there and hey presto you get past the control).

Also the VHI forums are only applicable to Ireland, ask.fm is global and I would imagine has many more subscribers than the VHI forums making the task of moderation considerably more difficult. Once forums grow beyond a certain size you often have to rely on volunteer moderators and the reporting of offensive content by other users.

The bottom line is that you can not blame the medium. Would you blame the postal service for hate mail?

Seanie will never do any time for the wrongdoings in anglo because he has to much dirt on a lot of people ,considering half the judges are bankrupt how do we know the judge handling his case is not bankrupt

I was just thinking the same. How are the people in Cuba and the Caribbean doing?

with you on this simon, all we’ve heard all week on the news and especially sky news, is about America, no mention of the other countries and the devastation that the storms have reeked there, some of these countries are amongst the poorest in the world, yet the media ‘s focus is on the richest one , just shows that they think more of the rich than the poor of this world.

If you want to blame and block websites for that, then we should block all social-related websites that allow commenting, including TheJournal.ie. would you want that to happen as well? That’s like saying you should close down schools because bullying happens in them.

It’s also ridiculously simple to get around such a block.

I know its the way he goes out and forces people to sign up shocking