[cloakandswagger]

Slippery slope. If I tell someone on the internet to kill themselves and it turns out they're actually suicidally depressed, should I be charged with a crime?

What if I post something that's just really offensive? I feel like we've entered a time where people would gladly see the First Amendment trodden over if it means seeing "justice" doled out to nasty people.

[favorited]

Eichenwald didn't "turn out" to have epilepsy – he had written about it before. This was someone intentionally attempting to harm someone by triggering a seizure.

And your hypothetical situation isn't hypothetical – people who cyberbully others into committing suicide are certainly charged for their crimes.

[LargeWu]

Yes, in fact, there is precedent for this: http://abcnews.go.com/US/massachusetts-teen-accused-urging-b...

[M_Grey]

This isn't even close to a gray area! The analogy would be finding out that your target is in a given theater, where you then yell "fire!". This was targeted and pre-meditated; the result and the intent were one and the same.

Your argument rests on something very different.