In yet another case of blurring between the lines of virtual and reality, a woman broke the law for poking via Facebook! Shannon Jackson of Tennessee broke the law when she poked a contact on her Facebook list, by violating a restraining order.
The order specifically prohibits either telephoning, contacting, or otherwise communicating with the petitioner. Violation of a restraining order in Tennessee is a class A misdemeanor, punishable up to 11 months and 29 days in jail, as well as a fine up to $2500.
This does leave one big question on the table, however—if the plaintiff here felt so threatened by the defendant, why didn’t she block (a little-known option in the privacy settings) or at least de-friend her on Facebook? From what I can see, you can only poke friends (or possibly people on your network with public profiles). Yes, the accused is responsible and shouldn’t have poked her, but shouldn’t the plaintiff have taken steps to avoid contact if she was distressed enough by their interactions to get a restraining order?
What do you think? Should the perp here have known her poke counted as contact? Was she naive or hoping to subvert the court order?
http://www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2009/10/12/facebook-poke-leads-to-an-actual-arrest
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.
Some people are not sophisticated enough with regard to computers to understand how to defriend or block folks. But the person who did the poking knew exactly what she was doing. It was provocative - apparently deliberately so.
The person who stalked me, by the way, did everything possible to get around the restraining order and I had to have her arrested finally. Sometimes that is what it takes to get a person to recognize and honor appropriate boundaries.
If it hasn't happened to you, you have no idea how intimidating it can be to have someone constantly intruding in your life who doesn't understand the meaning of the word "no".
If someone is "sophisticated" enough to open a Facebook account, they ought to be able to summon that wee bit of mental energy needed to block or de-friend someone.
It's also possible that the person forgot their stalker was on their list. Reasonable, I guess, but why go through the courts for something so silly as a poke? Block and be done with it.
But you know what the beauty of email is?
You can just ignore it. It's so, so easy to just not hit reply.
This charge is ridiculous, and makes a mockery of "restraining order."
Its not even hard to set up. You go under the privacy section.
Also, from the other side of things, it is plain common sense that contacting them online is the same contacting them via a phone. Not smart. Yes, a poke is one of the lowest forms of communication, but in the case where a person fears for their life a poke could be quite intimidating.
2. "Unfollowing" can be provocative and force a stalker into covert following or push them to other extremes (remember, they're not healthy; they are stalking). Many choose not to block but ignore. It does help keep tabs on the sitation/one's safety.
3. Twenty years of tech expertise here and I find Facebook's security features far more convoluted/less straightforward than most. FB is invested in keeping your info open so that they can offer it to advertisers. Therefore, it is not in their interest to put the security features up front and make them easy for *anyone* to use, and they don't!