Yes, Emoji Death Threats Are Admissible in Court

When someone threatened Fletcher Babb's life via Instagram, he wondered whether he could report it to the authorities. The death threat wasn't written in English, after all. It came via emoji.

The penalties for threatening comments on social media, even in jest, are well documented. But threats delivered via emoticons are unexplored territory in cyberlaw. According to legal experts, however, there may be some circumstances under which a sinister assemblage of emojis would constitute harassment, even assault

At the time, freelance journalist Babb was investigating Instagram's widening black market, specifically, the sale of promethazine and codeine-laced cough syrup, a.k.a. "lean." Read more...