British courts allowed to go easy on offensive tweets

New social media guidelines issued to British prosecutors will allow courts to show some leniency towards foolish, knee-jerk tweets and authors who quickly delete offensive posts.

The UK's director of public prosecutions (DPP) says the Crown Prosecution Service has now dealt with more than 50 cases relating to potentially criminal comments posted online.

Until now there has been little case law to guide the legal fraternity.

But now the DPP's office has issued guidelines on how to handle trials involving largely anonymous social networking sites such as Twitter.

DPP Keir Starmer says the scale of the problem litigators are confronted with should not be underestimated.

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