Mary Shelley warned us in Frankenstein. Ralph Ellison told us in the Invisible Man. So
often we create our own monsters, but we do not always realize it at the time.
Even before the exploitation of the internet, the toxic
rhetoric of the 2016 election, the alarming rally in Charlottesville or a
president who spreads more poison than policy,
the mold was cast for all that grief, and more to come by letting seemingly small bad
things find a home, and a place to accumulate.
This road was not paved or monsters created by any one person, company, organization, or
government. Equally, once the problem became obvious, it was not possible for
any single entity to address the problem. Deftly, those seeking to undermine
the credibility of facts presented to the public, quickly coordinated
domestically, internationally, and across agendas to share their own best
practices. They exploited the competitive nature of business practices in the
internet industry and that anti-hate groups were in their own similarly competitive
mode for sponsorship. As a result, early in the internet age, extremist
communities became more coordinated and strategic while civil society and industry
entities prevaricated. The mindless and all-consuming
zombie chickens of hate had infected each other, flown the coop, were on the
loose, contagious, and breeding.
Zombie chickens would seem a ridiculous choice of allusion to
illustrate a serious problem. Chickens
are not terribly threatening. Zombie chickens are practically laughable, but
not if you were counting on trying to eat one or get any eggs.
Conspiracy theories and the people who spread them were likewise
not taken seriously. Regardless of who
decided conspiracy theories, or their advocates were harmless, that phenomenon began
an erosion of our faith in information sources and fed our worse fears. The
internet, until very recently, did not elevate the truth, it infected it with a
virulent malady.
Now, those apparently harmless chickens we created have come
home to roost. Those chickens, like our information channels, which were once a
reliable source of enrichment, are now questionable and even dangerous.
The critical mass of stakeholders needed to develop industry
wide hate management technology goals, standards, policies, and public
education mechanisms did not begin to materialize for almost 20 years. We can all see the damage that delay has caused.
Once the choice was made to not get ahead of the problem of corrosive content, catching
up became the only alternative. Have you
even tried catching a chicken? Like catching up with online hate, no simple
matter.
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