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Yesterday, the Supreme Court made history when they ruled in favor of Anthony D. Elonis, a Pennsylvania man who posted several violent threats on his Facebook page after his divorce. This was the courts first case that juggled with the grey lines of the First Amendment and social media. The Court said that there wasn’t enough evidence to convict the man based on the idea that a reasonable person wouldn’t take his communications as a threat.
Elonis took to his personal Facebook account to post such things as; “There’s one way to love you but a thousand ways to kill you,” and “Enough elementary schools in a ten mile radius to initiate the most heinous school shooting ever imagined.”He claimed he was an artist who turned to rap lyrics for therapeutic purposes to help him cope with depression.
Which is why I ask the question, do we take social media too seriously or not serous enough?
