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Originally Posted by Damien
I think there are a number of issues here, the first of which is to be clear on what he actually did.
He did not just post a single racist message about Muamba. He then posted a series of racist and sexist messages directed specifically at other members of the site who found his initial post offensive. I won't repeat what he said but they were very offensive and meant to be read by the people he was abusing, he sent them those messages. There seems to be a desire to lessen the extent of his abuse to that single message about Muamba as make the sentence seem more egregious than it actually is.
That doesn't mean a jail sentence is warranted of course. However I think it's good to see action taken against these sick messages that are becoming increasingly common on the Internet and Twitter. It's worth taking a look at the messages Stan Collymore receives, it's often a unrelenting stream of explicit, sometimes violent, racial abuse whenever he comments on any topic. This is not a minor problem. It is not 'people being stupid on Twitter'. It's very nasty people hiding behind their perceived anonymity to constantly abuse people because of the colour of their skin or their gender. They have also taken to trolling the Facebook pages of the recently deceased to cause further grief to their families, again this will be tinged with racial and/or sexist abuse if they were not a white male.
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I don't think anyone is upset he has got punished. He deserved what he got. But was he anything other than a stupid little boy acting the big man on Twitter and FB? I believe the only reason he got a jail sentence is because it went viral and that is no way to have a justice system.
He wasn't the only person to make disgusting comments, but he was the only person who went viral.