THERE is rampant abuse and bullying in cyberspace.
According to one report, some 80 per cent of netizens have complained of being ‘victimised’ on social media through prolonged campaigns of degradation by an individual or group.
The Internet enables almost instantaneous access – abusive comments can be on social media within seconds. Usually, the person being attacked is unseen and probably has also never met his or her attacker before. And needless to say, it’s all too easy slinging mud at an imagined foe.
Politicians are the favourite targets. Most of them chose to look the other way for fear of attracting more abuse and being pillored if they retaliated. Just read the comments carried by some of the local news portals and you will get the general idea.
Some search engines are contemplating improving their rules to better protect users. Twitter, for instance, is looking to revamp its user-protection policies after Zelda Williams, the daughter of comedian Robin Williams, cancelled her account over abuse following her father’s apparent suicide.
According to Del Harvey, Twitter’s vice president of trust and safety, the social site has suspended a number of users deemed to have violated its rules and is also assessing how to further improve its policies to better handle tragic situations like that of the Williams.
Zelda Williams said she had received “photoshopped images of her father’s dead body and other disturbing messages – some blaming her for her father’s death.”
It’s to her credit that despite being upset, she was still able to answer the personal attacks and slights not in insulting and harsh language but with a light-hearted quip — to perhaps greater effect.
In a statement posted on a blogging site, she said: “To those who are sending kind words, know that my father’s favourite thing in the world was to make you all laugh. As for those who are sending negativity, know that some small, giggling part of him is sending back a flock of pigeons to your house to poop on your car right after you had washed it. After all, he loved to laugh too.”
In a commentary titled Social media spurs prejudice, the writer Karl du Fresne noted that politics nowadays had become intensely tribal.
“Each political blog — whether on the Right or the Left — has its own tribe. They are united in hatred against the other tribe. There are even factions within tribes that hate each other.
“Any member of the Left-wing tribe foolhardy enough to stray into the Right-wing tribe’s territory, or vice-versa, will be eviscerated.”
du Fresne believes this has come about partly as a result of the decline of the traditional news media.
He said the old-style newspaper was a “broad church” presenting a wide range of information and comment which allowed readers to form their own conclusion and time for sober reflection.
But the digital revolution has changed all that by giving, as du Fresne pointed out, politically-minded people an alternative.
“They now tend to gravitate to the online forum that represents their tribe. They show no interest in hearing what the other side thinks, still less in considering whether an opposing view might have some merit,” he said.
du Fresne noted the newspaper also provided the traditional forum for political debate via its correspondence columns, adding that good newspapers took the trouble to ensure a broad spectrum of opinion was published and still do.
“Crucially, letters were subject to an editing process which filtered out abusive and defamatory comment. And just as important, anonymity was prohibited. The price of being able to comment publicly was that you had to identify yourself.
“No such constraints apply online where anonymity gives courage to cowards.”
He agreed that “champions of the Internet” were right — up to a point – when they applauded the fact that public comment was no longer controlled by gatekeepers in the mainstream media.
But he also stressed gatekeepers served as “a civilising influence” and their absence from social media is something “we may come to regret.”
Abuse and bullying are conducted furtively on the Internet under the cloak of anonymity. The perpetrators are faceless, making it very hard to hold them to account for their actions. That’s probably why some people will be horrible and nasty no matter the situation.
But is ignoring abusing postings on social media the answer to dirty cyber attacks and bullying?
The are two schools of thought – one is that if you ignore the abusers, they will soon tire of not getting any response and stop while the other is that the abusers will become even bolder if left to their own devices.
There is a third alternative which advocates the enactment of laws to deal with deliberate abuse, bullying, slandering, spreading of intolerance, bigotry, fear and hate online.
It’s extremely difficult — if not well nigh impossible — to police the Internet but at least the afore-mentioned will offer victims of cyber abuse and bullying a way out of the social media cesspit.