Richard Bacon of BBC is an Enemy of the Internet and Free Speech. Bacon wants you arrested for speaking your mind.
On March 19, 2012, BBC featured a program entitled The Anti-Social Network, in which, broadcaster Richard Bacon dissects the divisive issue of internet trolling (making provocative remarks and/or posts in order to elicit a reaction from those who receive it). His misinformed and narrow approach to the issue might not have made itself known, had it not been for the true underlying motive which is revealed at the very end when he claims that he is contacting the authorities. Richard Bacon is on a mission to lobby censorship of the internet, its users, and its content.
The biased nature of the film is apparent when Bacon immediately jumps into a lengthy narrative describing the events leading up to a young English boy’s suicide. It’s asserted by the boy’s family that his suicide was a direct cause of remarks by anonymous internet trolls, even though the boy went to school with the posters in question.
The mother and father even claim that their son was “never bullied” in school and was “well-liked.” This obviously isn’t the case given that these youths were threatening to beat him up at school the next day, which seems to imply that there was indeed some degree of real world bullying going on.
The outrage of the parents is understandable, but they shouldn’t spread such unfounded conclusions without looking at the fact that their child was bullied by the same exact people online as he was offline; so, the accusation being thrown at “cowardly anonymous internet trolls” doesn’t hold much weight at all.
In this case: Hate the player, not the game. Anonymity is not the enemy and neither is free speech. The whole reason this young boy was bullied online was because of the very same repression of speech that Mr. Bacon advocates. Had these children been allowed to openly vent their frustrations in the real world without fear of institutional reprisal, perhaps this young boy would still be alive today.
The real reasoning behind the production of this documentary has nothing to do with Bacon’s sympathy for the dead and has everything to do with his massive amount of butthurt.
Richard Bacon was trolled hard for two years and instead of ignoring the troll, he not only decided to respond himself, but he got his wife involved as well. On top of this, he called the police and made a one hour video documenting his raging butthurt for the whole world to see. If that isn’t “feeding the troll,” then who knows what is?
Richard Bacon is using his butthurt as a precedent to further the destruction of free speech in his own country and throughout the world; and it’s despicable that a self-proclaimed “journalist” would advocate pro-censorship policies. As a direct result of his documentary, Twitter implemented a new reporting system which allows users to snitch on other users for making critical or “abusive” comments about them.
In protest of Twitter’s pro-censorship response, it’s proposed that we use and abuse this tool to its full extent by reporting every single tweet that @richardpbacon puts out, thereby inundating Twitter’s reporting system with useless crap. Bombard his phone lines, Twitter, and e-mail with cyber-rape too.
Report him by going here: https://support.twitter.com/forms/abusiveuser
File a complaint on BBC’s site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/complain-online/
Also, contact info for Mr. Bacon:
BBC Office Number
0050909693
E-mail
bacon@bbc.co.uk
Twitter
@richardpbacon
(IMPORTANT)
Recent arrests of internet trolls and people voicing their opinions online in the UK:
http://news.sky.com/home/uk-news/article/16187397
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2036935/Natasha-MacBryde-death-Facebook-internet-troll-Sean-Duffy-jailed.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2117243/Liam-Stacey-posted-racially-offensive-Twitter-remark-Fabrice-Muamba-collapsed.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/104844-Man-Goes-to-Jail-for-Being-an-Internet-Troll
http://m.gizmodo.com/5883291/putting-a-face-to-internet-trolls
http://www.southportvisiter.co.uk/southport-news/southport-southport-news/2012/02/16/southport-dad-jailed-for-putting-racist-remarks-on-facebook-100252-30340971/
(Cover Photo: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/fivelivebreakfast/2008/07/welcome_richard.html)
