In late February, two cases of threats made through MySpace accounts took place at high schools.

The first took place in Orlando, Florida, where a 15 year-old sent out a threat to over 1,700 of his friends via his MySpace account. The FBI was called in to questions the student of his online posting. WESH.com reported the message sent out stated that a student at one local high was going to be shot by a student at another local high school.

The 15 year-old student’s who’s MySpace was used to sent the message claimed he did not send the message. The student was not immediately expelled, but it is believed that expulsion could be the charge.

In a similar story from Belleville, Illinois, another 15 year-old male was arrested for threats made on a MySpace account. This student was immediately expelled for the threats, unlike the other case. STLtoday.com reported that consequences where taken immediately because of the large amount of threats going on around the world today.

A high school student in Canada was recently kicked out for school for cyber-bullying on the social network Facebook.com. The student had setup a group about high schools vice-principle, where students posted derogatory comments about the vice-principle.

The Globe.com, reported 5 students, including the creator of the group Brad Parsons, where each suspended. Brad Parsons has yet to hear from the school what his punishment would be, but the other 4 students each received suspensions ranging from 4 to 20 days.

The school has a zero-tolerance policy concerning cyber-bullying. Facebook does not allow these condone type of groups on their network. Due to the large network of Facebook though, they do not have the time to check every group. They expect their users to have good judgment when in these situations, and they do have a “report” link where users can reports situations of cyber-bullying, spam and others.

Facebook’s chief privacy officer Chris Kelly had this to say:

“We’ve made a decision as a host of this information to not allow those types of personal attacks, (and) we deter them by expecting accountability. But we also have terms of service that allow us to remove those from the site, and when those are reported, we do that.”

Other students started a rally in the days following the suspensions which turned violent. Four students were taken away by police officers. Charges from the students range from obstructing a peace officer and assault with a weapon. The students contend that this is a breach of their freedom of speech.