After the recent slaying of a British soldier in a suspected Islamist extremist attack, angry social media users took to Twitter and Facebook, with some dispatching racially and religiously charged comments that got them quickly noticed on the busy boulevards of the Internet.
For at least half a dozen users, their comments landed them in jail. Acting on complaints from outraged members of the public, British authorities slapped charges of "malicious communication" on the worst offenders.
Social media crackdowns have become the hallmark of authoritarian governments from China to Syria. But the arrests in the past week became the latest in a string of such cases in Britain, underscoring how even some of the world's greatest democracies are struggling with the rising power of social media.