Sorry friends & MM, I'm gonna get a bit political right now....just heard on the morning news that someone Facebook'd a status about killing kids and how the recent school shooting was the beginning.

Response? "This is rarely checked because its posted on a social network and usually never acted upon".

Maybe if stuff like this WERE checked we could prevent or lessen the blow. Schools, theaters, malls, restaurants wouldn't be the base for mass shootings! Yea, some people are stupid and they'd post an evil rant and do nothing but some are evil and stupid enough to act upon their rant.

What do you all think? For me, we are not waisting our resources for checking on these posts, true or false.

I think we live in a society where it is common to wish death upon people or threaten violence when we dislike or are frustrated with something. It would be impossible to check every instance of such communication because it is so accepted.

Depends.  It really needs to be taken into context.  I agree it's completely not funny & out of line... but the poster could have commented that they were annoyed by all the little kids in the mall/store/bus etc, and that he was ready to go firing off on all of them.  Or, myb it was a comment on that Louisiana Mall fight amongst teens, or the Ohio rape case, and that they should just go into the school & fire off on each one of them.


Just saying, people too often get carried away, or take one little nugget & throw it out of context for some reason.  Guess it makes news.  I'm not saying comments like that are funny, or I'd like to have a friend say stuff like that, but it also probably shouldn't be illegal.  Nor should much police resources be spent investigating such a thing either.

On the other hand, if someone with tendencies of being a bit off, erratic, loner (and not sounding joking), writes a straightforward post, saying goodbye to the world or something, and they're off to shoot up their high school, mall, theater etc.. Then yeah I think police should be notified and act upon it, and I think they would as well. They would not just sit around and say "Well, it's only a Facebook post. We're not allowed to act upon it. Government rules allow for free speech in social media."

I'm constantly saying I want to stab someone in the face out of anger, so yeah.... I mean the problem is that we have the freedom of speech so people can say whatever they want be it that they had a fantastic lunch or they want to harm someone. Some people are just nuts and do shit to get attention, the more shock the better. While it is a good idea and could POSSIBLY prevent something, I personally think they would be chasing down a whole bunch of dead ends.

Neither psychology nor any other discipline can predict, of those who speak violently, who will actually act out, and who never will. 

think of it like CAM'ing on mayhem. people need to CAM someone who seems off in a way that could possibly be dangerous. they might just be blowing off steam (people say stupid things when angry) or they might be deadly serious. maybe the cops can check to see if their apartment is full of assault weapons.

If this is the case I think it is, the DA could not do anything because the threat was no specific enough and they had no concrete evidence to arrest him. However, he is being monitored by the police.