Thursday, June 28, 2012
Silencing the Trolls: Twitterconsiders ‘hate speech’censorship
Is Twitter allowing too much freedom? What helped
move revolutions along in the Middle East, has a flip
side of cyberbullying and abuse, especially of those
in the spotlight. Now Twitter is taking its first step
towards censorship. The news was broken by Twitter’s Dick Costolo
who was speaking to the Financial Times. As the FT
put it, the site’s chief executive “became visibly
emotional” as he described his frustration in
tackling the problem of ‘horrifying’ abuse, while
maintaining the company’s mantra that ‘tweets must flow’. Anonymous and unpunished,
irresponsible twitter-users find the site ideal for
expressing all kinds of extremist, racist and
sexistopinions. Celebrities are among those most
vulnerable, with curses and bullying clogging up
their ‘@connect’ section, offending many and disrupting conversations, often turning them into
hate-fights. To stop the ‘hate speech’ anarchy, Twitter is
considering starting off by blocking the very
possibility of replies from so-called ‘non-
authoritative’ users, marked out by the absence of
a profile picture, followers or bio information, as
FT.com reports. This is the first step, but there might be more to come. However, the company’s management is concerned
that by installing any kinds of ‘selective’ measures,
they may put an end to the unique Twitter-style
‘freedom of tweets’ that has helped Arab
revolutions. Anonymity was the key factor that
allowed so many users there to join and have their say. “The reason we want to allow pseudonyms is
there are lots of places in the world where it's the
only way you'd be able to speak freely," FT quotes
Dick Costolo as saying. Twitter is basically the ‘last
harbor’ of anonymity, as it does not have to be
linked with such powerful database platforms as Facebook and Google. Silencing trolls may hit those
‘revolutionary’ users as well. The reality is that Twitter’s move may be coming at
the right time, as websites that allow comments and
replies may soon be forced to identify online
bullies, or ‘trolls’, under different legislative moves.
In the UK, for example, the Defamation Bill is now passing through the House of Commons, which will
allow direct legal action against online offenders. Justified or not, ‘troll’ censorship will surely open a
new page in Twitter history.
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