It has been the topic on the lips of everyone in the western world in recent days, the courageous action taken by Marina Ovsyannikova, who Monday evening with the help of a few words written on a sheet of paper managed to puncture Putin’s news bubble for just a short while. Sometimes it can be that simple and basic. Although we have to fear the price this employee of the Russian state media will be made to pay.

Admittedly, the report published on Tuesday afternoon by Observant falls into a different category altogether. However, it clearly shows that here too people who do not agree with what is being published resort to taking action that bears some resemblance to events in Russia. The exact nature of the discussion in Maastricht is no secret; luckely anyone can read about it on the Observant website. That anyone should eventually choose the option ‘cyber blackmail’ in response to failing to be proven right in any such discussion is deeply sad.

The DDos attack that shut down the Observant site also drew an indignant response from Rianne Letschert, President of the Maastricht Board. She said: “That an independent university publication has been taken down impinges on the freedom of the press and free speech. As the Executive Board, we distance ourselves from this action. If you disagree with something, if you hold a different opinion, then you take part in the debate, in a respectful way. In a dialogue session or through the newspaper/website using open letters, but you do not take down a website.”

At the end of last year, in my capacity as editor-in-chief, I too became embroiled in an online discussion, the kind where you know at the outset that an understanding is not going to be reached. Some people just don’t adhere to the adage: ‘We agree to disagree’.

Somewhere in the to-and-fro of mails, as the tone became increasingly grim, I was asked the question whether I would like it if the person with whom I was discussing all this were to hack me and were to share personal information about myself and my family on social media. This colleague, since he works at TU/e, even boasted of being a certified hacker. I could look that up for myself, he told me pointedly.

I then pointed out to him that what he had mailed me had, in fact, come very close to being a threat. Oh no, he mailed back, I had actually misinterpreted that, he had really presented to me as an interesting thought experiment. Well, sorry buddy, but I file experiments like this under the heading ‘cyber blackmail’.