Stop Cyberhate - Not The Internet

If you’ve been following the tech news you may have heard that British MP Luciana Berger and others in Europe have  been calling on Twitter to remove all anti-Semitic speech. First, her statement presupposes that the hate is only on Twitter and that other hate on Twitter is OK. These statements are problematic at best and terrible distortions at worst.  At the very least she seems to consider Twitter the source and vector for all such things. There was recently an election in the UK and singling out Twitter, by Berger and others, appears little more than fashionable politicking.  

The worst part is, of course, that things politicians say receive media coverage. In receiving media coverage these statements gain credibility without consideration for the underlying challenges and problems connected to them. .

Stopping anti-Semitic or any hate speech is an admirable objective. However, to eliminate such things from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or the comment sections of other websites, does not eliminate the hate from the world. Sometimes you need to repeat the hate in order to expose it and refute it.  That cannot happen when the words and phrases are abolished. The technology does not yet exist that can detect the subtlety of phrases and innuendo that is often involved. Considering the billions of users and posts, it is impossible for companies to train the necessary army of moderators to be able to review and act consistently.   With all our experience we are still seeing channels, pages and users being banned, deleted and unpublished in error. We don’t have the answer yet.

Recently we have seen technology make it possible to block content prohibited by local law, on a country by country basis.  No matter what governments mandate, if the technology  to comply doesn’t exist, the laws are unenforceable and largely meaningless.  The future answers to hate speech online will come from technology. Governments will not be the ones to create it.

The companies are not the problem; they are the key to the solution. For government representatives to cast industry in an adversarial role is shortsighted and counterproductive.

There is a problem, without question.  Too often the easy sounding solution turns out to be nothing more than sounds.  We all deserve a solution to online hate that is intrinsic, real and enduring. 

In Search of Internet Justice

We have become conditioned to crave justice, even to expect it in unreasonable places.   Justice can be hard to achieve in the best of situations, but the justice system is well defined, down to small disputes. The Internet has no such system.

Short of outright criminal activity, there is very little recourse to online hate, abuse, distortion and manipulation of info.  Bad things may be removed, but there is no way to undo the damage, to make us as we were, to provide true justice.

Hate on the Internet is generated in a click or two - faster and louder than spoken words and heard in unending echoes.

It is an easy to create online hate, there is no equivalently easy step to undoing and redressing it. As a society, this bothers us deeply.

What kind of justice can there be on the internet?

There is vigilante justice. We have seen increasing instances of individuals and groups unmasking anonymous trolls, sock puppets or people deemed socially reprehensible. Exposing their real identities and information and, in many cases, ruining their lives.  Not that I have any sympathy for bottom-feeders of the world, but justice means that the punishment fits the crime. It is meant to restore harmony or make the damaged whole.  Vigilante justice has no reason or measure and often goes wrong.

There is self-defense.  Although ideal in principal, the reality often falls short. By some mysterious facet of Internet physics, hate speech propagates through the tubes better counter speech, good speech or truth.  It works, but the effort required to defend and respond is often grossly disproportionate. Self-defense on the Internet is not about response or justice. It is proactive and preemptive. Don’t intentionally become a target, don’t rise to the bait and have a reputation and network that supports you and allows you to laugh-off whatever is thrown at you.

There is Government regulation. Strangely, law has become the worst place to look for justice in online abuse matters. Fraud- yes, conspiracy – yes, terrorism – yes, but hate, defamation, incitement, racism –no. This is mainly because laws start with politicians. Politicians are rarely practicing businessmen, or lawyers, or savvy to real world issues. Mostly politicians see their job as getting reelected, which means going where and doing what the public wants.  The public is often as uninformed as the politicians. The Right to be Forgotten law, now popular in Europe  is a great example of just how wrong this can go.

Industry intervention - The internet industry is not interested with justice. Justice requires a value judgement on what is a crime and the weight or value of that crime.  The industry, rightly, does not want to be cast in that role. Honestly, do we actually want them to be?

The answer is as it has always been – community, a new form of social democracy.  Advances in technology now allow the growing Internet community to decry bias and hate at a new volume. That volume finally begins to challenge the magnitude that hate, bias or injustice achieves so easily.  The catch – participation. At some point we will arrive at the formula for how much outcry counters the wrongs.

Is it justice? No. But just as Internet hate  is something different from real world hate, maybe Internet justice is something new and different as well.

My Brother Sent Me This And You Need To Read It.

My brother the doctor sent me this email (link, blogpost, Tweet)  about…

The University of Kentucky is going to suspend holocaust studies

                                               

or

President Barack Obama has authorized over $20 million to facilitate emigration from Gaza

                                                or

FEMA is building detention camps for U.S. political dissidents

…and he has checked and  it is true.  Must read!

Have you received one of them or something like it? several times? Do you know something else? They’re all Internet rumors; they’re not true and, in some cases, they are years old.

Internet rumors are not just spread by anti-government extremists, conspiracy theorists or disgruntled members of society (although that is where they often start), more and more they are being spread by ordinary people.

The most tenacious rumors have a grain of truth, which is what makes them so attractive and believable.

Rumors matter.  In the 1967 riots in Detroit, Watts, Cleveland, Newark, and Harlem, incidental events became exaggerated to the point of being incendiary in already pressurized communities.

Although the mechanism of rumors has not changed, today we are seeing rumors being instigated to further hatred of ethnic, religious and social groups in both subtle and blatant ways.

The University of Kentucky is going to suspend holocaust studies – False.

This rumor is nearly identical to an earlier e-mail rumor about schools in the U.K. which originally circulated in 2007.  It appears someone substituted the words "University of Kentucky" for "U.K." and re-circulated the message. Holocaust education is mandatory in Britain.

President Barack Obama has authorized over $20 million to facilitate emigration from Gaza – False

On January 27, 2009, President Obama sent a memorandum to the Secretary of State, authorizing the redirecting of money in the State Department's Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance (ERMA) Fund – a fund established to deal with unexpected humanitarian issues - towards Gaza relief.  This Memorandum does not deal with the status of Palestinian refugees nor "open the floodgates to Hamas" to enter the United States.

FEMA is building detention camps for U.S. political dissidents – False

FEMA does have facilities with significant stockpiles of equipment and material. It is very likely they have contingency plans to house large numbers of people displaced by disasters. I should hope so – that is their job. 

           

An increasingly common tactic of rumor mongers is to claim that the rumor is true because it is being ignored bias mediaoutlets. Omission of unsubstantiated facts does not define bias - it defines good journalism. 

What if you get an email, Tweet, Facebook post that you think may be an Internet rumor?

1 – Stop: never forward emails in the heat of the moment

2 – Confirm: make an effort to confirm the information in the email by visiting ADL.org, Snopes.com or Google. Try to determine the source of the information and if the information has been embellished.

3- Consider: Consider the potential damage the rumor could trigger for a business or society at large. Think about the possible motivation of the person who initiated the rumor.

4- Don’t Distribute: if you don’t know the sender, if you can’t confirm the information reliably, if you suspect it has been circulated with malicious intent.

5- Respond: Let senders know when they are spreading rumors and not communicating facts. The excuses that “some of it is true”, “I didn’t write it” or “it sounds like something they would do anyway” is an excuse, not a justification.

Internet rumors, as with most rumors, are created to get us to respond in a visceral, emotion way. When friends and families forward us these emails, post or Tweet,  it is usually out of a genuine desire that we see something they believe to be important.  

Stop-Confirm-Consider-Don’t Distribute-Respond.  

What We Have Taught the Internet and What it is Teaching Us.

Humanity continues to pour everything it can into the web; good, bad, inspired, degenerate, genius and foolishness - and the Internet has begun to talk back.

The companies who had unlimited access to the earliest data, were the first to hear what the net was saying. The data was confusing and much of it was not pretty. Criminal behavior such as child porn, scams, collusion to commit criminal or terrorist acts are all easy to call over-the-line.  Prevention is not so easy but that’s a different discussion altogether.  The intent behind the worst things on the internet is fairly easy to determine.  Online hate, in its broadest context, is far more complicated to approach. It also says some very disturbing things about us. 

We have taught the net that we have forms of behavior -- sporadic and patterns. We all get angry and say or do mean stupid things in life and online. This is sporadic behavior – a one time or rare and uncharacteristic outburst. Patterns of behavior are very different situations.  Trolling is a pattern of behavior. Racism, misogyny or anti-Semitism are all patterns of behavior. 

The online companies have learned this. They rarely ban someone or cancel an account for a single outburst, but when they detect a pattern of behavior, it is a very different story. This is very similar to a first time criminal offender getting a lighter sentence.

At some point being forgiven for a single lapse in judgement has become an excuse invoked by the perpetrator instead of a boon granted by the effected community.

Giving a gun to an emotionally unstable child or sibling in hopes of fostering a hobby does not absolve the giver when the worst happens. The big game hunter is not harmless when they "accidentally” kill a loved or endangered animal. When a serial racist or misogynist beats a women or minority, it is not a lapse.  It is pattern.

Patterns of behavior set the stage for our actions. When an action goes over the line in harmony with a pattern of behavior, it is not a first offense.  Maybe it shouldn't be treated as if it were.

Internet Frankenstein – Digital Prometheus

Frankenstein is still with us. It is the Internet. A creature assembled from bits and pieces of hundreds of other things – some alive, some dead, some beautiful, some criminal, some incomprehensible  – all stitched together and “scientifically” endowed with life. The result for Mary Shelley, as it is for us, is an over-sized, somewhat dangerous, hideous yet beautiful creature.

And with the monster loose, the town’s people are panicking. The politicians, listening to the loudest and least informed town folk, demand that the monster be destroyed. People hate it, people fear it. Pitchforks are sharpened, torches are lit  - the monster must be controlled or destroyed, the Internet must be legislated into mediocrity.  

The monster, for its part, is largely misunderstood. Nothing like it has ever lived before. It is viewed with awe and suspicion. It is always in danger. It is always striving to find its true nature.

Just as the monster from the book forces us to examine our humanity, so the Internet forces us to confront our darker side. Don’t rush to kill the monster.

Aging is Inevitable, Maturing is Optional.

Mid July 2015  - Twitter and Reddit separately  announced major changes which signal an almost unavoidable maturing. It happens to all of us. We get a job, get a car, get an apartment, get a houseplant, get a goldfish, get a dog/cat and figure we can handle a house and a family. Each step in that process comes with additional burdens. Turns out the Internet industry is not so different. Marketing gurus will tell you it is all product cycle related, but anyone who has been in the online business long enough will tell you it is more than that.

Historically, platforms start with a product idealistic, free-speech, community-will-self-regulate and morality-will-win-out approach.  In time community, legal, moral or stockholder forces become significant and Internet companies discover the need to take a direct role in the safety of their users and the nature of the online environment they create.

This cycle has been repeated by every successful Internet platform. It is not a conspiracy. It is an example what truly happens at the intersection of the First Amendment, democracy, free enterprise and technology.  Common sense and good judgement does prevail.

In 2008, I sat in a room at Stanford University Law’s Center for Internet and Society with most of the significant companies of the day. Stanford, aided by Chris Wolf and other interested influencers helped the ADL convene a meeting to discuss hate on the Internet with an assembled industry group, not individual companies – a first-of-its-kind and somewhat prickly gathering.  

All the companies present that day have worked to oppose hate online.  While many young companies are starting out with informed and innovative anti-hate solutions, some older companies steadfastly refuse to acknowledge any responsibility for what transpires on their services. 

Responsibility is an indicator of maturity.  

Maturity is not always a function of age.

Hitting Big Targets

There is no denying the staggering magnitude and impact of hate on the Internet. But the Internet is not inherently hateful. Software and applications are not inherently hateful. Companies are not inherently hateful. So why, do anti-hate champions beat-up the companies, and then only the largest ones?

Let’s be honest - hate against companies and platforms comes from Internet users, a comparatively small percentage of users. They are usually a group of haters with too much time on their hands and a twisted thirst for attention.

It’s almost understandable.  The policy decisions of any one of the major platforms can inconvenience and frustrate countless people. A change on a small start-up goes unnoticed. Equally, offensive content on a major website is not more vicious than hate on a lesser site, but can be seen by millions. As a result, while Facebook, Twitter and Google are pilloried by haters others like Reddit, Veterans News Network, countless blogs and even major hosting companies get a free pass.

Critics are quick to point out the legal decision in Europe against Yahoo, Google, etc as validation of their perception. Those same critics conveniently neglect to research or mention the numerous and continuous ToS changes voluntarily made by these companies.

There are the conspiracy crazies who cry that any content policy is an effort by some group or another to take over the world.

Big targets are easy. It’s easy to be jealous of success or leery of big corporations.  Big, diversified companies also make more mistakes than small focused companies. Big companies tend to be unfazed by repeated complaints that are unfounded or based on rumors Nothing gets a complainer more irate than ineffectuality or indifference.

It is much harder to think about the problems of the Internet as a whole, to try to formulate workable solutions, advocate for change and champion common sense. 

Finally, the Internet lets us all believe we are important. Supposedly, Internet companies listens to important people.  So when people are not heard, they would rather believe the fault is with the companies, rather than with themselves. 

When we, as Internet users, are informed enough, knowledgeable enough, maybe we will get big enough to include ourselves as targets.