Editorial: Twitter no place at all for bullies

Twitter - it's a place where everyone and anyone has a voice, where people can interact and message their idols and a place where people can abuse others or be abused.

In the last week, we've seen and heard a few dramas that have happened with users on the social networking website.

Charlotte Dawson was attacked via Twitter by users encouraging her to kill herself, which she retweeted before later being admitted to hospital. The messages were extremely violent and obvious cyber-bullying.

And then this week, Prime TV broadcaster Eric Young has satisfied his bosses at Sky News Australia with an apology on Twitter for an expletive-laden tweet calling for an Olympics drug cheat to hand over her shot put gold medal.

The veteran reporter has not tweeted since August 14 when he caused a stir with his comments directed at Belarussian Nadzeya Ostapchuk, who was stripped of her gold medal and the prize awarded to Kiwi Valerie Adams.

His tweet that attracted criticism called Ostapchuk a "f***ing cheating cow" and told her to "hand it [the gold medal] over you b****".

While some of us use Twitter to vent, some of us may have to think carefully about what we tweet - especially if we have a public position. To avoid any controversy over our positions and our thoughts, we tell people our views are our own in our profiles and some people have multiple Twitter accounts - one that is work-related and another that is personal ... but is that enough? Probably not.

Some people can get away with saying controversial things on Twitter - but it seems okay when we expect it from them ... comedians, musicians or those characters who are purposely sarcastic or nasty to get reaction and entertain.

But setting up accounts to specifically be nasty to someone - like what happened in Dawson's case - is not appropriate.

Twitter can be fun, useful and enlightening at the same time. It's not a place to bully people.

What do you think?

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