When is your tweet a threat?

Police reviewed hundreds of online postings–and made several arrests–over alleged anti-cop threats made in the wake of the killing of two officers last month.

It used to be a lot easier to define threats. It’s not that our dialogue has evolved much. It hasn’t. Art and music have always spoken about violence in the most graphic terms, whether it’s in rap lyrics or Guns N’ Roses songs. Kids have consumed violent art and speech since long before Hansel and Gretel baked a witch in an oven, or Beowulf hacked his way through Southern Scandinavia.

The difference today is the delivery system: the Internet and social media.

Suppose, after the recent NYPD threats, I posted that I planned to “swarm on any m… in a blue uniform,” meaning specifically the “punk police.” Suppose I promise that “when I finish, it is going to be a bloodbath of cops dyin.'”

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