@IH8UHOES, I hate you too. 

In the early hours on New Year's day, two men known only by their Twitter handles (@IH8UHOESand @RichlonelyJuan) took to Twitter to seemingly threaten the sexual assault and life of an unidentified young woman. One individual uploaded a revealing picture of an intoxicated girl sprawled and unconscious in her own vomit. The two supposed friends then continued tweeting back and forth discussing assaulting and killing the woman. 

The tweets went viral, enraging digital onlookers. Unsurprisingly, a police investigation into the sensational tweets determined the individuals were not co-conspirators of a gang rape, but only of a cruel joke. There was no woman, no murder, no assault and no charges would be filed. The individuals were given stern warnings and, according to local news stations, appeared remorseful for their actions. 

Even a cursory glance at the Twitter accounts will make your blood boil. Your knee-jerk reaction may be to ignore them or even lash out at the tweeters, but is the speech egregious enough that it should have been censored by Twitter? However strong the impulse may be, the answer is not to censor online speech. Rather, we need to start using and responding to it more responsibly.  

What surprised me about this incident are the similarities to the Steubenville rape case and its trial by Internet. The case caught national attention two years ago when text messages, tweets, pictures and a 12-minute video were uncovered that callously discussed the brutal gang rape of an intoxicated 16-year-old girl by members of the town's popular football team. 

Last March, two students were convicted of the sexual assault and kidnapping, while only one of the students was also found guilty of distributing nude images of the underage girl.  

This case may never have been prosecuted if it hadn't been for Anonymous, a "hacktivist" group that primarily utilizes the Internet to engage in vigilante justice. Hackers from the group leaked the text messages, photos and video from the students' phones that identified the perpetrators of the abuse. 

As the victim didn't remember the assault, the recovered messages and images provided the bulk of the evidence that convicted the perpetrators. It's questionable whether convictions could have been attained without the Internet being compelled by the case to get involved and illegally hack into the students' phones. 

Both of these cases raise important questions about the contentious place of free speech on the Internet and how online speech can slip into the realm of incitement. Inciting speech or "fighting words" is seen as speech that can foreseeably provoke individuals to respond in a violent manner. Former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes gives the most famous example of incitement as an individual falsely shouting "fire" in a crowded theater. Likewise, enraging and shocking speech as seen in theSteubenville case and on social media sites may also fall under the incitement limitation on free speech, but only if people are provoked by the speech to do something about it. 

In the Steubenville rape case, the online speech ultimately had a positive impact on the situation. However, under other circumstances, online speech creates an environment where individuals could be provoked to react violently to the information. 

The Internet's misidentification of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects is one such case. Following the bombing last April, the Internet, including Anonymous hacktivists, took it upon themselves to uncover and incorrectly post the identities of the suspects. After working off of haphazardly gathered information, their investigation led them to wrongly accuse several individuals, including Sunil Tripathi, a Brown University student who had been missing for a month and whose body was later found in the Providence River. 

Online users apologized profusely for misidentifying the college student, but only after they had already doggedly posted information about Tripathi and others on Twitter, Reddit and Facebook, endangering the lives of the individuals and their families. Although, to my knowledge, none of those incorrectly named were physically harmed as a result of the misidentification, the danger was still palpable. As this potentially dangerous situation was unfolding, should Twitter, Facebook or Reddit have intervened and disabled the forums? 

As a private party, Twitter is not bound by the First Amendment, but they indicate that under special circumstances they do censor accounts. For example, following the explicit conversation that included threats of violence to the unidentified woman,@RichlonelyJuan's account was suspended for a period of time. 

Alarmed individuals who had seen the tweets had contacted the police, but no one had been compelled to violent action against the tweeters. After discovering the tweets were part of a hoax and no one had been hurt, Twitter reinstated the account last week. But should they have? Can Twitter or Facebook play a more proactive role in curbing potentially inciting speech produced by its users? 

Yes, it can, but it's neither in Twitter's interest nor our own to do so. The First Amendment and its restrictions are written in a way that they actually protect the majority of speech, including hate speech and libel, within certain limitations. Instead, the First Amendment shifts the responsibility of monitoring speech from the government to the people.  

Social media should only be the medium through which we create and receive speech. How we respond to it should remain our choice. However, this also means we need to be more responsible with our online speech because it has real, tangible consequences. 

There is no question that certain online posts on Twitter, Facebook and Reddit have the potential to invoke other users to action, whether violent or not. However, instead of choosing to engage in spreading false information, censorship or violence, we should instead respond in a manner that will enhance the conversation, whether by retweeting or reprehending an online troll. 

If we truly understood the impact our words can have, we would exercise discretion in our speech as much as our First Amendment right.