Facebook user arrested for poking somebody
By Asavin Wattanajantra in Editorial
Posted in poking, privacy, Facebook on
Some very interesting news from America. A woman has been arrested for poking somebody on Facebook.
You probably need a little more background to the story. According to the Tennessean, 36-year old Sharon Jackson was arrested for violating the terms of a protection order when she gave somebody the poke, which banned Jackson from “telephoning, contacting or otherwise communicating with the petitioner.”
Although police have been called in to stop forms of online harassment, it seems to be one of the first cases where somebody has been taken in simply for poking somebody.
According to the report, police have made copies of the pages where the alleged victim was poked. Because she broke an order of protection by doing it, she can be punished with a jail sentence of up to a year.
Poking is a uniquely Facebook feature and is taken by different people to mean different things. Some people take it to mean flirting - hence the existence of a group called ’stop with the poking, let’s just have sex’.
Facebook itself says its simply a way for friends to interact with each other, and doesn’t actually have any specific purpose. It’s up to somebody to interpret it any way that they want. But the majority of people take it to mean saying ‘hello’ or nudging somebody for attention.
With the woman who was arrested for the poke, there’s obviously reasons why it happened. She was violating a protection order for one thing - sure it was just an online nudge, but there’s no real difference from calling her up and not saying anything on the phone.
The victim obviously didn’t want attention from the poker, and if you think about it this could be taken to mean something far more sinister - poking, jabbing, knifing?
It is interesting about how social networks are rising up as a form of communication ahead of things like the telephone and email, and is also interesting when it comes to thinking about online privacy, which I have been looking at closely in the last few months.
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