3 false statements about items that the victims allegedly either had for sale or were giving away, with the object of encouraging unwitting third parties to repeatedly contact and harass the victims at their home and on their telephone. The defendants also anonymously sent hostile and ominous communications directly to the victims. William claims that the criminal harassment statute is facially unconstitutional, arguing that it regulates protected speech and does not provide sufficient notice of the type of conduct that is proscribed. Additionally, both defendants argue that the statute is unconstitutional as applied to their conduct because they did not engage in "fighting words," an unprotected category of speech that we held could be constitutionally proscribed under the statute in Commonwealth v. Welch, 444 Mass. 80 (2005), abrogated on another ground by O'Brien v. Borowski, 461 Mass. 415 (2012).3 Further, both defendants contend that their conduct did not meet the statutory requirements because their actions were not actually directed at the victims and there was inadequate evidence that their conduct caused any serious alarm to the victims. We conclude that the Legislature drafted a sufficiently specific statute that is not unconstitutional on its face; that the defendants' conduct 3 We acknowledge the amicus brief submitted by Eugene Volokh.