Police Arrest Woman for Facebook Poke

[Tom Goldman]

Police Arrest Woman for Facebook Poke

Though this story is more complicated than it sounds, police have arrested a woman for performing a Facebook poke.

On September 25, Shannon D. Jackson of Hendersonville, Tennessee was arrested for poking one of her friends on Facebook. A poke is performed by visiting a Facebook friend's page and then clicking on the poke button. The person is notified that you poked them, and the whole situation ends there. That is, unless you decide to poke back, but we won't go into that sticky mess.

The woman that was poked had filed a legal order of protection against Jackson (for reasons unknown), resulting in the arrest after police determined that Jackson had violated it with her reckless poking. This order prohibits any kind of communication at all, even poking via internet. Proof of the poke was provided to authorities through a print-out.

There's a giant hole in this story if you haven't caught it yet. Anybody that uses Facebook and has broken up with a significant other or ended a friendship violently knows that you can easily remove people from your friends list. Facebook by default, in my experience, does not allow the poking of people that are not on your friends list. So, in this case, the poking victim could have just removed Jackson from her friends list.

If she had gone through the trouble of filing a legal order of protection, why would she keep Jackson as a friend on Facebook? Was it perhaps because she wanted to keep up with Jackson's status updates? Or maybe they were neighbors in FarmVille and just couldn't break such a strong bond? If you don't know what FarmVille is, god bless you. Now pretend you never read the word and live a long, productive life.

This is yet another case of a virtual action having real-life consequences. The law now has to consider new kinds of situations when it comes to the rapidly evolving social networking worlds of Facebook and Twitter and MySpa... okay maybe just Facebook and Twitter. As stupid as it sounds, if Jackson did intentionally poke the unnamed woman, she probably should rightfully suffer the consequences. The problem could lie with proving that Jackson actually performed the poke in a court of law, which to me would seem like something out of Seinfeld.

Source: Slashdot [http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/AheadoftheCurve/tennessee-woman-arrested-facebook-poke/story?id=8807685]





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[Dimeinurear]

This is why I don't follow internet trends. Honestly, is the victim THAT stupid that she can't even put up with that? Was it just one poke or multiple? Sadly it looks like Shannon's not going to be able to put up a fight at all.

To quote the best cartoon character of all time: "The system fails again!" --Bender.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

There's a giant hole in this story if you haven't caught it yet. Anybody that uses Facebook and has broken up with a significant other or ended a friendship violently knows that you can easily remove people from your friends list. Facebook by default, in my experience, does not allow the poking of people that are not on your friends list. So, in this case, the poking victim could have just removed Jackson from her friends list.

*frowns* That's not a giant hole. Quite the reverse.

I don't know about other people, but when I had a very, very bad break-up, I couldn't even bear to log onto my page, never mind remove someone from my profile.

If they were threatening me as well, I doubt I could even do anything rather than report it.

Fairs fair Tom, this women may just be scared. And the Law does say "NO contact".

 

[Neesa]

Okay, that's just silly. I agree that she could've just removed Jackson from her list and this wouldn't be a problem. It's not that hard to find who you want and delete them. And Facebook is nice enough to not notify the person that you removed them. Not til they go to your page and leave a comment or something. I understand that she "broke" violation, but this could've been easily avoided all together. Just sill to arrest someone over this. If she were sending threatening messages or something, then yeah. A poke really can't do anything. Especially since it's virtual. Jeez.

 

[Deleted]

Next up, woman gets feelings hurt, oceans boil.

 

[stonethered]

Unfortunately it looks like I will be the first person to ask.
What is farmville?

 

[Textbook Bobcat]

How our society is evolving into a sophisticated utopia...

I find myself slowly depressed by how childish, for want of a better word, the mainstream is becoming. Even going so far as important political announcements being made via Twitter. Ugh.

 

[Frankydee]

Oh god that's just really..... retarded.

What's worse is the courts didn't laugh that lady out of court then arrest her for blatant misuse of her brain.

 

[ssgt splatter]

What? What? What?!
What
Arrbitrary
Silliness

 

[odBilal]

Unfortunately it looks like I will be the first person to ask.
What is farmville?

something like harvest moon (dont tell me you dont know that either)
You have a little farm with plants animals and stuff and can earn money and XP

 

[joystickjunki3]

This is insane and mundane. Good luck proving that she's the one who clicked the link.

 

[QuirkyTambourine]

Wow. Pettiness is fun

I'm not sure who I'm more frustrated with, or who I feel is a dumber example of the human race.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

If someone robs your place, it's still considered burglary even if you forgot to lock your door. It's the same here; it's entirely likely that the person "poked" didn't deliberately leave the contact information up in the hopes that the "poker" would get in touch, and that this was an oversight. A "no contact" court order puts the responsibility on the person receiving the order to obey it, even in this case.

Stop blaming the victim, kids, unless you waive all rights to assistance when you eventually screw up.

-- Steve

 

[sabotstarr]

Unfortunately it looks like I will be the first person to ask.
What is farmville?

something like harvest moon (dont tell me you dont know that either)
You have a little farm with plants animals and stuff and can earn money and XP

that and it sucks the life from the depths of sole. But still fun

 

[ShadowKirby]

The problem could lie with proving that Jackson actually performed the poke in a court of law, which to me would seem like something out of Seinfeld.

"Did you poke that woman with the internet ?"

 

[Capo Taco]

I'm pretty sure restraining orders aren't given out like candy. And I'm pretty sure that if you receive one, you understand the gravity of said order. I'm also pretty sure that if you despite those facts, still click on 'poke' for a person, you're doing it to deliberately harass someone who prefers to be left alone by you.

And if that person that's trying to live her life without your interference has to be reminded of the harassment you've inflicted upon her, then it's very good that the justice system can intervene.

Edit: btw the image they used at ABC news is cool!

 

[Caliostro]

Oh for fuck's sake... How low can we go?

OMG, SHE POKED ME! ONLINE! BOOOO-FUCKING-HOO!

When can we start counter-suing or, at the very least, fining people for wasting the court's time on frivolous cases?

I could understand if she had violated her restraining order and just, I dunno, grabbed her violently on the street or something... But give me a break, poking her... Online... ? Get the fuck out.

 

[stonethered]

Unfortunately it looks like I will be the first person to ask.
What is farmville?

something like harvest moon (dont tell me you dont know that either)
You have a little farm with plants animals and stuff and can earn money and XP

I loved that game. I bought the original on the Wii the weekend after I had my wisdom teeth pulled. Kept at it for a month before I could bring myself to play anything else.

So they have one for Facebook then?

 

[Therumancer]

The problem I have with this is that we as taxpayers need to pay for something like this to go to court. In reality I bet the whole thing comes down to some prosecutor trying to get his name in print and maybe make it into legal textbooks for helping establish a precedent, rather than this being even remotely reasonable.

The big failure of the system here is not more defenses in place to prevent prosecutors for wasting time and money on ridiculous cases that only serve a slight chance of furthering their careers.

Of course I am guessing from the way this reads is that it's becoming a criminal matter.

Strictly speaking with the time being wasted it's pretty obvious how this SHOULD turn out.

Basically the arguements are going to be that the person being protected by an order should not have to defend themselves from the person under order.

However given that the assailent was on the victim's "friends list", this could be seen as baiting the person they are protected from. Things can be complicated with these kinds of orders and the precedent can vary widely, but basically if the person under protection seeks contact with the person they are protected from that becomes a whole new animal, and probably the closest analogy to what is going on here.

 

[InsertWittyName]

As chopper would say - "Harden the fuck up."