Prince William joins the fight against cyber bullying
The Duke of Cambridge is leading a new campaign to put a stop to abuse online.
The Duke of Cambridge is leading a new campaign to put a stop to abuse online. Big name internet providers such as Sky and TalkTalk are getting involved by joining forces with social media giants Facebook and Twitter to tackle the growing issue.
Four years ago 31 year-old Chris Richardson from Walker was targeted by cruel twitter troll who said he didn’t deserve the life-saving heart and lung transplant he received almost nine years ago, with one cyber bully making fun of his weight tweeting that he was a disgrace to his organ donor because he was overweight. Chris says he can’t believe how nasty people can be online:
“It was absolutely awful. It gave me terrible anxiety, it was horrible. I had my transplant back in 2007 and all I was trying to do on twitter was try and raise awareness and spread the news of my transplant and I just thought, how can you treat me like this?”
Adrienne Katz is CEO of the Bullying Intervention Group here in the North East, she welcomes the new taskforce but say’s they will have a tough time stopping social media users from posing cruel comments:
“You can’t do this in isolation and only tackle one thing because for young people there are no boundaries anymore between online and offline life, if someone’s targeting you they’ll target you in any which way they can”
She says social media sites and internet providers must accept reasonability for giving people a platform to voice their thoughts on but will struggle to control people’s activity online:
“They are one of the parties that have reasonability after all they are providing a tool but they’re not controlling the user’s behaviour. That said they have a huge role to play in stamping out abuse online.”