Yesterday I posted this article about how the #SaveAnonymity hashtag has apparently won us temporary respite from proposals to “fix online abuse by requiring registration”. There’s more to it than that, of course, but that blogpost is over there. 🙂
As usual I forwarded the article to both Twitter & Facebook, and a friend (who dabbles in matters of internet regulation) commented:
Good article. I was reflecting on this theme in light of the calls from football clubs for platforms to do more about racist abuse. It’s a real issue no doubt but asking everyone for ID etc will not fix it. There are 2 realistic options – a) keep playing whack-a-mole with the trolls ie the status quo but get faster and better at whacking, or b) limit access to platforms with admission criteria that are designed to keep trolls off. The second option might be possible but comes with its own risks of bias, exclusivity etc. What is NOT realistic is thinking that applying some kind of ID criteria onto an otherwise open access platform will fix the problem as the trolls will work round this as you point out.
Emphasis, mine.
Being my glib self I responded with “c) fix people”, further noting that although it’s probably the hardest solution, I believe it’s also the right one because few things of true worth are actually “easy”, and that it’s pursuit of “easy” fixes like legislation or identity which are achieving nothing in this space.
My friend reacted with a laugh-emoji, as one is wont to do nowadays. But I’m serious.
My model here is the pursuit of gay rights from 1978 to the present day; I am not gay, but when I was dropped into a Catholic boys’ / secondary school at age 10 — long story — I rapidly learned that the following words and phrases were meant to be insults, though I had no idea why:
- poof / poofter
- woofter
- shirt-lifter
- bum-bandit
- queer
- homo
…and a whole host of others. There were comedians on peak-hours TV making jokes about gay people, there were comedy gay stereotypes which were “knowing”, even “ironic” but rarely sympathetic. There was “gay-bashing” in the media, and I did’t realise that it wasn’t a metaphor. When I got to UCL in 1985 I finally saw gay activism, made LGBT friends, and met people who were fighting for a culture.
And, of course, there was “AIDS”, and not dying of “ignorance”.
I know that it’s not everyone’s favourite film regarding positive representation, but I still think that Tom Hanks’ Oscar-winning performance in Philadelphia was a major icebreaker in public perception of LGBT issues, driving a truck over the British world of “Ooh You Are Awful But I Like You” and hanging the remains out to dry.
How is this relevant?
I spent my childhood, teens & tweens watching a bunch of embedded and demeaning negative cultural attitudes evaporate in the face of humanisation of “the other”. I saw positive stories be told, to advance peoples’ abilities to connect and empathise with “the other”. I am even sure that some people regret the loss of “culture” which has ensued by mainstream normalisation – see those who nostalgise the fading of “Polari” – but overall I feel that we’re in a much better world for LGBT people in the 2020s than the 1980s.
And what was the last time we saw a positive message about online communication for people to empathise with? At this moment the only one I can think of is another Tom Hanks vehicle, and that’s “You’ve Got Mail” from 1998.
The internet has no-one to speak for it: positive stories don’t garner clicks, and Hollywood dramatists still prefer the monsters to emerge out of the network, rather than the heroes.
The truth is, though, that the monsters are already here and they are ourselves – and in another nod to 1978, Douglas Adams completely nailed the issue in the THHGTTG:
“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.”
https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Babel_Fish
The internet has brought people together in a way that we’ve never seen before, removing barriers to communication between different races and cultures, and it turns out that if you do that to generations of people who are unused to having to rub along with “the other” then they get rude, offensive (or: offended), and like dogs separated by an online “fence” they bark and snarl and stress-out each other.
But the internet has few advocates, and hardly any of them have “standing” in the public eye. Almost nobody wants to tell positive stories to combat the toxic context.
We can’t legislate our way out of this situation; there already were laws against “assault” and “grievous bodily harm” but still “gay-bashing” was a thing. Increasing the punishments doesn’t deter, otherwise the death sentence would still be on the books as punishment for murder.
What needs to happen to address online abuse is: “c) fix people.” – the slow, complicated option. The one which involves teaching schoolchildren that other people exist, that they are different to you — or: maybe the same in some ways — but that difference doesn’t mean that you get to snarl at each other.
That difference does not license abuse.
And then we have to wait for the old behaviours to die off, and not nostalgise them.
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