Would You Stop Hate Online If You Could?

If you could stop most of the hate on the web, why wouldn't you? I know who you can ask.

Most hate online does not start on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, but that is where it finds its legs. I am not just talking about sexism, racism, ableism or other hates, but instead the ability to casually create and stigmatize any "other".

If the major platforms had put as much effort into user safety as they did into revenue streams, things might be very different.

I have seen the worst of online hate over the last decade in the Western World. It's my job. The calls for an uprising against the enemies of "civilization" (e.g. the world of white European descent) is nothing new. That a critical rhetorical mass has been reached which emboldens such things to action, that is new. It was also inevitable.

The platforms were well aware of the phenomenon of hate speech, but elected to let it remain in order to spur dynamic and heated exchanges on their services. Safety of users was not totally disregarded, but there was a gamble. All of us now know that bet was a bad one. Hate won.

The companies chose to err on the side of allowing more instead of  action that might over limit content. Hateful protagonists were quick to exploit the opportunity. Normalizing hate, camouflaging hate and encouraging hate became the order of the day.  That sliver of hate, allowed by the platforms in an earnest attempt to accommodate free speech,  was used to wedge open  the internet for seeds of  malicious content that are now a vast root network of evil.

Many argue that good and creative content would have suffered from more stringent policies. There is no question that innocent content might have been removed under such a policy. However, now that we are suffering seemingly endless online abuse, more content, innocent and otherwise, is being removed. When good content is removed people appeal to the platform. That's what they do now, that is what they would have had to do 10 years ago. The companies bought time, not progress.

It can also be said that the progress we have seen in controlling online hate, advance algorithms, fledgling A.I.s and armies of moderators, could have begun long before now. Improving the internet environment sooner was possible. In the time we waited, we lost ground to hate and incivility.

If you could stop hate online, why wouldn't you? I don't know.