[vcjohnson]

Do you often get death threats from people who are simply having a bad day and disagree with you? Trivialization of the horrific elements of online interaction is just as bad (if not worse) as conflating them with legitimate dissent.

[bertil]

Yes. I ride a bike in London, and taxi drivers tend to act on it too. I’ve been agile enough to avoid the worst, but my bike was smashed more than I can count (I use city-wide bike scheme). I’ve ended in the hospital twice: I got my front teeth smashed once; I also got my knee busted another time.

I am not trivialising threats, just arguing that putting them in context would help solve the issue — a lot more than putting thousands of teenagers in jail just because they didn’t mesure the consequence of their anger.