Social media case
Name
Institution
Date
Introduction
Social media cases have been on the rise and new links between social media post and their effective utilization in court has come as a new wave of evidence. We get to see that lawyers now tend to modify and change ways in which they prepare for cases of high conflicts during such times, and through such means and practices, we get questions asked about social media and its utility. Claims can be determined by initial social media posts presented, and depending on the way such cases are presented as well as the privacy charges we get to see that social media can turn out as evidence in court or be scrapped off as evidence as well. In my paper, I intend to discuss a simple case in which social media has been used to make court rulings and my opinion on the case rulings.
The case brought about by Shaw v. young, which took place on August 17th, 2016, brought a stand to what constitutes cyberbullying. Young held that the husband sent her repeated emails and text messages as well as repetitive posting on her social media page, which constituted cyberstalking and, in the long run, constituted as domestic abuse, which could earn her permanent protective order against her husband (Lynne et al. 2018). The wife testified that her husband consistently posted messages on Facebook, some private such as her immigration status as well as he threatened to release some of her photographs on the same platform. She claimed that the husband constantly texted her friends, saying “bad things” about her, which she received information when her friends forwarded the messages to her. The hearing later found the words to be in a given repetitive pattern, which would constitute verbal or nonverbal forms of communication without invitation, which would represent factors that would cause a person to suffer emotional distress.
Laws broken in this case presented can be seen to be a violation of privacy in which the husband in more that one example was seen to threaten the wife with intentions to expose her private photos on various social media platforms. In other instances, revealing her immigration details on social media platforms warrants the violation of her privacy as it involves sharing her private information captured in her immigration details on a social media platform that is open to public viewing. Such threats, whether done or not done, can be seen to cause some emotional disturbance as well as providing information about a person without their will is a possible violation of privacy.
Conclusion
Social media offers communication between people, and its only done through will and not forcefully as they reserve the right. The court ruled in favor of the wife, stating that continuous communication is a transparent form of verbal or nonverbal communication, which is uncalled for (Moore et al. 2015). My stand on this case is that the court ruling was just based on the argument presented its quite evident that the husband was using social media to reach out to her in which she didn’t want to. What influences my thought that the case was a clear violation of privacy was the fact that the husband shred information which presented a bad picture of the wife to other people. The husband also shared her immigration details on social media platforms showing the world her details and information she considered private another clear violation of privacy. The final blow was the threat he made, stating that he would share her private photos on a social media platform, which would be another clear violation of privacy. Even though he never did expose her pictures, it was a potential violation. These acts combined show a clear violation of privacy which makes me support the court ruling
References
Moore, R. S., Moore, M. L., Shanahan, K. J., & Mack, B. (2015). Creepy marketing: Three dimensions of perceived excessive online privacy violation. Marketing Management, 25(1), 42-53.
Social media and family law cases by Lynne strobe, Jeniffer Presti ad khizar sheik family lawyers (2018) https://familylawyermagazine.com/articles/social-media-and-family-law-cases/.