The mail-bomb suspect threatened me on Facebook

First, most such threats are probably meant to intimidate and inflict psychological pain. They are a kind of “troll tax” on public commentary the perpetrators disapprove of. It is, therefore, important that we not allow ourselves to be intimidated. To give in would only encourage more such behavior. For what it is worth, I have continued to write and speak about immigration and public ignorance over the last year, and I have no plans to stop.

Second, social media firms should do more to bar death threats on their sites. In principle, they are already against the rules of Facebook and Twitter. But, too often, nothing is done when such incidents are reported. That is exactly what happened in both my case with Facebook and Rochelle Ritchie’s with Twitter. As a general rule, I am not one to join in the currently fashionable trend of beating up on Facebook. They provide an enormously valuable service at virtually no cost to consumers. And I recognize that it is difficult to come up with content standards that are fair to millions of users with highly diverse views. But barring death threats should be a relatively easy case. To put it mildly, they contribute little, if anything, to public discourse. And their prevalence causes fairly obvious harm, and poisons the atmosphere even in cases (which, fortunately, are the vast majority) where the perpetrators have no real intention of making good on their threats.