The Independent is revamping their comments system in an attempt to minimise trolls, idiots, and troublemakers from derailing argument about important issues. I’ll discuss the article paragraph by paragraph, from the source article on The Independent website:
“Websites have been encouraging cowardice. They allow users to hide behind virtual anonymity to make hasty, ill-researched and often intemperate comments regardless of any consideration for personal hurt or corporate damage. “
I agree with this, to a point. Websites, particularly with post-hoc moderated user content, have given platforms for people to say and post all sorts of things. It is not in anyway a novel issue. It’s a fact of the internet since the days of Usenet trolls, spammers, and loons. People make stupid comments on the internet. Websites reflect this, whether they encourage it is another matter given it existed prior to newspaper article discussion forums.
“They may be fun to read, but all of us need to reconsider how they appeal to our baser instincts – and whether they actually threaten the future of free speech rather than prove a valuable demonstration of it.”
I agree with moderation. I think there are plenty of places where free speech shouldn’t apply, purely for practical reasons: The day Nature publishes A. Herbert’s natural proofs of why lizards did 9/11 or the day Little Johnny tells the headmaster to fuck-off, in the name of freedom of speech, will be sad days indeed. Review and moderation is often useful. I think it could improve many newspaper websites by stopping the usual ad hominem nonsense and weed out arseholes.
But questioning whether idiots on the comment section of a newspaper threaten free speech elevates them and is a gross exaggeration. Some people say stupid things. Ignore them or deal with them. They don’t threaten freedom of speech, the reaction to them does.
“It has been hard to excuse the excesses in some of independent.co.uk’s comments. In trying to bring the immediacy of post-moderation, some posters’ closed minds and wilful neglect of commonsense (let alone decency) meant all too often that we ended up shutting articles to comments. Add to that the infuriating persistency of spammers and we can only thank the temperate, sensible and often still forceful posters who stuck with us. “
I don’t think anyone should defend idiots, but a by-product of freedom of speech, and the subjective nature of idiocy, means that on a medium such as the internet, you are going to encounter them. It’s how you deal with them that counts. I have some sympathy with the Independent’s position on closing comments because of Godfrey vs. Demon, and ramifications of English libel law.
“Such nuisances might have emanated from a minority, but their bigotry and offensiveness left a smell that lingered not only across all comments. It was starting to drift across the site.
We have been far from alone in suffering the worst excesses from the sort of people one would cross a very wide and busy road to avoid. As Leonard Pitts Jr observed on the Miami Herald: “Message boards? have become havens for a level of crudity, bigotry, meanness and plain nastiness that shocks the tattered remnants of our propriety.””
Christ, some of the abuse I’ve received via blogging would take their propriety and shove it up their bottoms (I said bottoms, rather than arse, out of a sense of propriety). Yet I continue. It never ceases to amaze what delicate flowers some people are about words. People will be getting upset with cartoons next.
The punchline follows:
“Now independent.co.uk is aiming to raise standards through increased accountability. We cannot justify giving a platform to those who abuse it; but we shall be proud to host for whom free speech is an asset to be respected – along with, to be honest, the well-judged flash of irony and humour.
So we have changed our logins to encourage comments from individuals or even official bodies using their Facebook or Twitter accounts – with other options for Yahoo or Open ID log-ins. There is also a Disqus option, where your account must be validated through your e-mail.”
Clear your internet cache, or open a new browser, and search for Google Mail. Sign up for a new account, and then use it to sign up for a Facebook or Twitter account. If you’re worried about an IP ban use Tor, or an open proxy. Voila, you’re more accountable and can express yourself with well judged flashes of irony and humour.
You can’t get around that. Not without chucking the baby out with the bathwater. The benefits outweigh the negatives. If you enforce strong identification on the Internet you lose whistle-blowers, people who would be fired (possibly unjustly) for views contrary to their employers, dissident movements in repressive states using things like twitter, or blogging, etc. etc. etc. This is why I favour user moderation and rating of comments/other users, alongside traditional moderation, rather than associating a sense of legitimacy with having an identity.
“(There are also other methods, by the way, with which we shall excise the idiocy of the spammers.)
The obligation to preserve free speech is as much on those who have the opportunity to spread it as on those who wish their voices to be heard. We have made our changes and now we encourage you to speak – forcefully and plainly, yes, but bearing in mind sense and sensibilities. (Our terms and conditions for postings explain how and why we seek such a balance.)
We hope this will flourish alongside our policy of post-moderation, which allows for immediacy and deeper involvement. But that is counter-balanced by the “flag” that alerts us to any abuse, with swift suspensions. “
I’ll reiterate that I see The Independent’s need for moderation in no way incompatible with free speech or pointless. What I find particularly galling is framing it in terms of obligations. Many inalienable rights are a bit contradictory; take for instance the contradictions inherent in UDHR articles 12, 18, 19. You do not have obligations to free speech, it’s (in theory) inalienable, not negotiable or up for debate. You have obligations to law. The Independent are not preserving free speech in their comments system. Free speech for a website like The Independent would be anarchy. The flag system is a good idea that has been used successfully elsewhere.
“Yelling obscenities at anyone with opposing views is not how best to draw a crowd, let alone win the argument or serve democracy.
If you are speaking up, then speak up proudly and with responsibility. Embrace this opportunity to come out from the cloak of anonymity. That’s for the cowards for whom “freedom of speech” is something to rant about rather than an expression to live by. With all its obligations.”
You do not have obligations for free speech, it is (or should be) an inalienable right. It is also quite right, as with debates, the legal system, and many other important aspects of civilisation for people to limit it where it is sensible to do so. It’s not a statement about freedom of speech, or about obligations for peons. Associate a sense of legitimacy with a recognised identity for everyone and you’ll wind up with identity cards, like during the war.
