The ugly face of social media is becoming increasingly apparent with police struggling to deal with reports of harassment and sexual grooming.
Britain’s largest police force recorded 1,207 crimes reported to them which involved Facebook in the crime report. This was a rapid increase of 21% in only two years.
Similarly, crime allegations involving Twitter rose by 19% over two years, hitting 138 last year.
Scotland Yard was not able to give information about the types of crimes alleged to have been committed on social media sites.
But they are likely to be concentrated in what is called “trolling” offences in which public figures or other individuals are abused and even directly threatened in cyberspace, often by those brave souls who hide behind the mask of anonymity.
Other offences will undoubtedly include online sex grooming cases by paedophiles and other harassment offences.
It is estimated that the real figures are much higher than reported.
Earlier this year Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo admitted they "suck" at dealing with abuse and so-called trolling, vowing in an internal memo to "start kicking these people off right and left".
Two years ago a woman who was campaigning simply to have a woman included in the people featuring on a new £10 note was threatened with rape and “worse than rape”. The perpetrator, 23-year old Isabella Sorley was jailed for 12 weeks for the crime.
Also relating to the campaigner as well as the MP who defended her, John Nimmo, 25, had to serve eight weeks with Judge Howard Riddle commenting that it was "hard to imagine more extreme threats".
