During recent weeks, the topic of communicating ‚masses‘ have been quite a familiar sight in the headlines, be it explicitly or implicitly. Seeing the role of social media during the London riots, Prime Minister Cameron partially shut down digital communication in order to reinstate law and order on the streets. As a reaction, in many places and on many occasions politicians and activists from all parts of the political spectrum commented on ‚obvious‘ solutions to the problem, all the while re-living the many discussions on digital topics from not-so long ago. Yesterday, Spiegel-author Frank Pantalong made an interesting case for the idea that unfiltered communication of ‚the masses‘ actually hinders the fight for a free web. It remains to be seen how much of this and the other points of discussion reflect reality, or maybe more so, reflect a certain understanding of the internet.
Cameron’s use of ‚the switch‘ may have been problematic from a freedom of speech-point of view and cannot be discussed at full length here, but taking a practical approach, he used a tool he had for ending a dire situation for a cause and did that – for whatever reason – successfully. Of course, there are parallels to regimes using similar reactions to similar uproars in the springs/summers of discontent, however, it probably comes down to which side of the fence we stand on. Same as it ever was.
Differently to the actions in Britain, Mr. Pantalong (his full article can be read here) makes some good points in pointing out that many a free speech idealist fell for something that a majority agrees to be wrong writ large in the economy: radical freedom. However, while every community manager can write an opera on the disgusting writings and comments made in the web, that is neither something new, nor something unique to the internet. Of course: the web enables and lowers the bar of entry for the distribution of whatever opinion users hold and thus multiplies the -lets call it – #*$$§{€[ blown into the lowlands of 0 and 1. In addition to that, the internet may not be a lawless place, but clearly the – immediate – consequences of (communicative) behavior opposing social standards are low to say the least. In the end ‚trolls‘ and ‚trolling‘ are a known phenomenon on- and offline, the only difference now is that it has become fantastically simple to be a troll, especially when you don’t expect anyone to read your trolling endeavors (something Pantalog points out himself).
After-all, the internet is a tool, nothing more. It may have been created for certain reasons and significant amounts of people may use it for certain purposes, but the end-result is out of anyone’s hands (not talking about the technical side here). Same as a certain code of conduct valued by everyone would improve onlineing significantly, it would maybe a good idea to take into consideration the structural background of trolling before using it for any kind of argument. Yes, it is annoying to be confronted with it day by day and yes freedom of speech needs (and has) limits (offline), but… both of those arguments may gain considerably if they took into consideration a presumed background and intention of such behavior. True, reason-less hatred is rare, blowing of steam isn’t, same as spontaneous ‚I am gonna kill X/you‘ thoughts are old news, the only new thing is the simplicity and thoughtlessness of sharing them (the latter may correlate with the former though). Take it with a grain of salt and enjoy the fireworks if you can. Most probably the troll had as much fun writing the #*$$§{€[ as you can have reading it.
Coming back to SocietyCon, it all boils down to education and an educated view of the web, both on the reading and the writing side of comments (see: track Education) and in the big picture most of the time things look a lot less grim than up close (see: main track).
– a commentary by Moritz Borchardt
Interesting side-note: the German phrase „Troll dich!“ can be best translated with the not-so aggressive „Bugger off!“
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