Express Yourself- but be careful how you do it.

What a world we live in. Tech - Social Media Platforms - the ability to Stream TV programmes, Music and Films and download books - Online shopping at our finger tips available 24/7. We are more connected than ever before but is this a good thing? We can make ourselves “heard” in ways that we never dreamt of. Imagine Alexander Graham Bell inventor of the telephone, would be thinking about smart phones, text, IM, selfies, Twitter, Instagram, Emojis - the way we communicate is so very different to what Bell ever envisaged. Yet, whilst this could be considered as progress in leaps and bounds, has it gone too far? Is the way that we communicate across these different types of Medium a positive?

On the day that Elon Musk, billionaire inventor and owner of Tesla, amongst other things, is being taken to task over the comments he made about a British volunteer , there is a lot of criticism about the way in which social media platforms are used in a vitriolic and offensive manner. Musk, who is on trial in a federal court in Los Angeles for the comments he made about/towards Vernon Unsworth. But Musk is not isolated in his behaviour. This type of scenarios is a daily occurence online. Imagine being a judge on Strictly Come Dancing and receiving death threats because your vote for a particular dancer did not sit particularly well with a member of the public.

The case against Musk is not just about the fact that a billionaire is trying to find wriggle room over what he put in a Tweet, it will be a deciding factor as to whether platforms like Twitter et al should be more responsible about the content that is permitted and also whether the remarks that are made can be deemed as defamatory.