British prosecutors are taking steps to reduce the amount of online abuse that is hurled around by treating hateful speech online the same way it does face-to-face abuse.

On Monday the Crown Prosecution Service published new guidelines in an attempt to crack down on online instances of “ill-will, spite, contempt, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment and dislike” towards race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgenderism.

In a statement, Alison Saunders, director of public prosecutions, said hate crimes were having a “corrosive effect” on British society and such crimes had become a priority of the CPS. Regarding the revised guidelines, Saunders said, “These documents take account of the current breadth and context of offending to provide prosecutors with the best possible chance of achieving justice for victims.”

Saunders went on to say that online abuse will be treated with the “same robust and proactive approach used with offline offending.” Such a move will mean a more rigorous approach to arresting abusive trolls on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Between 2015 and 2016, the U.K. saw 15,442 hate crime prosecutions, the highest number of such crimes ever recorded. Moreover, a large number of those crimes were “uplifted,” meaning the CPS asked for an increase in the sentence.

Writing in The Guardian, Saunders said that something has be done to tackle extreme views online, adding that the recent events in Charlottesville, Virginia, as well as Barcelona, should be reason enough to treat online hate speech more seriously.

Saunders said that some people may view the revisions as “heavy-handed” but she also said that as we are now part of a virtual community for much of our lives we must be protected from abuse just as we are in real life. “Whether shouted in their face on the street, daubed on a wall or tweeted into their living room, hateful abuse can have a devastating impact on victims,” she said.

The CPS also published guidelines that help to define what a hate crime is and to compare it to hostility. The kind of abusive trolls the CPS says that are more likely to be prosecuted are those people that stir-up “hatred against a whole group of people.”

What will this mean for followers of far-right organizations such as Britain First, whose Facebook official page is rife with abusive anti-Muslim sentiment in its comment boxes aimed at Muslim posters? It remains to be seen just how trenchant this new crackdown will be, and how many people will step forward and say they have been a victim of a hate crime. This year the British media reported that hate crimes against Muslims had increased five times since the London Bridge attacks.

Image: hipsxxhearts via Flickr