#onlineresponsibility

[allabouteli]

YOU ARE WHAT YOU POST.

[annakavanaugh]

December 30th, 2013 - My syndicated column as published by The Social Network Association

Recently, I enjoyed another of my routine marathon movie weekends, but this time with a twist. I found time to reflect on the profundity of the films I was revisiting, rather than skimming along the surface of the stories now naturally diluted in my familiarity with the scripts, actors and cinematic spectacles that films such as, “Braveheart,” “Troy,” “Gladiator,” and “The Passion of the Christ,” have given us. While these films may have been an unlikely catalyst, I suddenly found myself considering the pandemic of cyber-abuse through a lens I had not looked through before. The questions that have arisen for me are not ones I really want to ask, mostly because I fear the answers, but I more fear the consequences of failing to search for them. And so ask the questions, I will.

The Dark Ages, a period of time spanning some of the most extreme brutality in human history. What a barbaric bunch we were. What red stained soil we rose from. Times that, to declare ourselves righteous, saw savage crusades casting darkness over the lands in the name of God. Times that, for sport and entertainment, saw man pit against beast or fellow man until the prize of death determined the victor. And the crowds went wild. The more brutal the fight, the more we salivated. The more blood that spilled, the more we cheered. That was life. That was who we were. Thank goodness times have changed. Or have they?

We live in a culture of fear. Perhaps it is fear that keeps us in check, for the most part. In our daily lives we interact with one another in the physical world with a common understanding of right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable, legal and illegal. Our lives are governed by a social norm and code of behavior monitored by the power of law enforcement we instinctively dread dealing with. We understand that when someone angers us at work, in a restaurant, or in a grocery store, it will not be socially or legally approved to launch a physical attack against that individual. If someone cuts us off in traffic, steps in front of us in line, or calls us names, we are not entitled to physically act against them. Our emotions may rage when we feel wronged but fear of being ostracized by our peers, or socially rejected and punished by law, prevents the majority of us from acting on those emotions. We simply find another way to deal with them. Our physical world demands that. Unfortunately, there is another world we must navigate simultaneously.

The internet. What began seemingly harmless enough has evolved into a fully functioning civilization, separate and yet co-existent with our offline civilization. It is still our own society comprising the virtual pulse of this new cyberworld, yet so many netizens become unrecognizable to their physical world norms in their capability to administer extreme cruelty from behind their computer screens. How quickly so many of us abandon our civility and embrace barbarism. Is this an inevitable human regression that occurs when we are thrust into an anonymous environment with no police presence or mechanism in place to hold us accountable for our actions, or is slipping back into brutality merely the human equivalent of a comfortable old shoe?

As our civilization has evolved, there has been a gradual shift in the paradigms of social behavior, human interaction, and the laws that govern them. This has allowed for a consideration of basic human rights and a higher value to be placed on human life and the preservation of it. We now live in a modern society that rejects those who commit acts of violence and will punish the heinous crime of murder most harshly. Yes, we have come a long way and pat ourselves on the back for our moral and ethical advancements. We boast our humane enlightenment and take pride, and even credit for, the undeniable traits that make us a remarkable species. Traits of benevolence and compassion we can now express as part of an evolved society sharing the human experience. Still, I find myself searching for a way to reconcile this image of the great humanity we have defined for ourselves, with the daily evidence of its actions. Are we really enlightened or are we still living in the dark? Have we truly evolved, or have we only restrained the most ghastly elements of our nature? How do we explain away the undeniable human capacity to maliciously hurt others with deliberate intent to destroy their lives and livelihood? To humiliate and demoralize others as publicly as possible: to perpetrate, condone, celebrate, and derive great pleasure from the crushing cruelty so many of us gleefully inflict on our fellow human beings?

Imposed civility and the function of fear seem to keep our physical society in order. Online, that is not the case. We are all only a click away from being marked as a target and finding ourselves thrown into a merciless abyss of personal vigilantism, misguided vengeance, self-righteous witch hunts and the need to feed on the hurt and public humiliation of others. In our virtual civilization there are no consistent laws or immediate recourse alternatives to provide victims relief from the deplorable conduct of those who abuse the internet to abuse others. This allows the worst of human nature to then manifest in frightening, dangerous and deadly ways. Online abusers relish their perceived anonymity and use it as a cloak to mask their cruel and illegal behavior. This is emboldened by an omnipotent sense of power and false sense of security in believing they are entirely immune to detection, scrutiny, judgment or ramifications. From behind the veil of their computer screens and insidious fingertips, these individuals reveal a shocking capability to inflict ruthless abuse on others and operate in the cyberworld with free reign. This alone makes the internet the most dangerous environment we have ever created, and with that should come great responsibility in how we allow it to evolve. Because the internet is an ideal conduit for these aberrant behaviors, they are rampant. A cyber-abuse campaign can lead to very real consequences that reach into the physical reality of a victim, resulting in devastating destruction.

The internet has given rise to a dangerous set of conditions that stimulate the primitive nature in certain individuals prone to violent tendencies and inner aggression. Cyber-abuse is a game to the abuser. The goal of a game is to win. For a cyber-abuser, the win is the ultimate destruction of their target, even if that results in driving their victim to death by suicide. This is a consequence an online abuser cannot comprehend because they lose the ability in their game-play to distinguish between right and wrong, humane and inhumane. They are masters of dehumanization and disconnect from any form of moral compass. No one has the right to abuse the internet to abuse you. No one has the right to rewrite who you are. And no one has the right to cause someone so much pain and public humiliation that they are driven to die just to escape the trauma. Cyber-abuse kills. And it will keep killing until we no longer allow it to.

Will 2014 be the year our lawmakers pass consistent and effective legislation to address this pandemic? Probably not. Will 2014 be the year we all stand up as an online community and say, “enough”? Probably not. The sad truth is that many more will die before we finally understand that far too many people are dying because the internet is being used to kill. So maybe for now, the best we can hope for is that we will begin to ask these questions of ourselves and others as we enter a new year.

Maybe we could all remind ourselves when online that none of us are immune from becoming the target of a cyber-abuse campaign. And that when one of us falls, so do we all.

Whatever the answers, this much I know: humanity has many redeeming qualities, but none more important than our ability to make the choice to be better tomorrow than we were yesterday. Barbaric tendencies may be at the root of our human nature, but because we can choose, we do not have to give them life in our actions.

Be kind online.

[annakavanaugh]

January 20th, 2014 - My syndicated column as published by The Social Network Association

“If you build it, they will come.” And so they have. In all online interactions, more time is spent on social media sites than any other. Statistics reveal an extreme acceleration of growth in usage that is demonstrated by the 88 billion minutes logged in 2011 to an even more astonishing 121 billion just one year later. This has translated into the pursuit and achievement of enormous profits for sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, among several others, who make their money supplying interactive platforms for their online users. The architecture of cyberspace is a digital masterpiece. The networked systems intertwined in this virtual civilization comprise an information super-highway that is nothing less than a true marvel of technology. Sadly, in the complex blueprints and building of this vast and profitable online world, something fundamental has gone overlooked. And as a result, the creation of this marvel has come at a high price for a staggering number of users who have been left stranded in the darkest corners of the public domain.

To build comes with great responsibility. In the physical realm, we have learned this truth throughout history and, often, at painful consequence. These lessons learned provided us with invaluable hindsight that gave birth to the concept of “safety first” and led to the establishment of an enforceable set of standards governing all we aspire to build. Without this collection of laws, regulations, and ordinances put in place for the protection of people, the world we live in today would be fraught with danger and our lives impaired by hazardous conditions at every turn. Routinely, we would all witness tragedy. Homes would burn, buildings would collapse, airplanes would crash, bridges would fail, and restaurant patrons and hotel guests would become ill or injured. And so on. Fortunately, health and safety codes, while sometimes violated, keep those tragedies at a minimum. These requirements strictly mandate those who either engineer or functionally operate our society to keep us safe, as reasonably possible, by adhering to specific standards of precaution and protection. Why then is the same not true for the builders of our simultaneous virtual world? Considering the staggering number of suicides, and other tangible and traumatic damages that online victims are sustaining as a result of cyber-abuse, how can our lawmakers neglect to impose a similarly suitable set of safety regulations on our digital engineers? And how can so many of the builders of these online environments, playing host to such destructive abuse, deny any responsibility and disassociate themselves from all accountability?

Social media is the most interactive medium existing in the world today; having exploded in both usage and popularity from when first introduced in the virtual realm. The internet has given us ease of access to information but the social network system has redefined the means and manner in which we interact with one another. In these various networks and communities, we can now express ourselves creatively, share ideas, develop or maintain relationships, find emotional, educational, medical, or technical support, and even play virtual versions of our favorite board games with others – and we can do so anonymously. Unfortunately, as it stands now, embedded within the fiber of social media itself, are the ideal conditions to create an open channel for pathological deviancies to weaponize. And this is how, at the fingertips of cyber-abusers, these deviances become devices of mass destruction aimed at the victims they choose to target. This is not news to the companies at the helm of these profitable platforms. They cannot deny their awareness of what is going on and how their networks are so often being used. By allowing the abuse and exploitation of the social networks they have built, companies are, in effect, allowing the abuse and exploitation of their users. They are placing a higher value on the ability of cyber-abusers to freely harm others than on the protection of the victims whose lives are devastated as a result. Human decency, moral and ethical code, and basic common sense should be core values built into the operational policies, procedures, and practices of all domains on the internet, but most certainly all social networks providing interactivity with other users or the ability to leave public comments. Neglecting to provide victims an immediate form of intervention and relief by promptly addressing and removing all defamatory, abusive, harassing, and clearly malicious content posted by third-party visitors, these companies are condoning, and even encouraging, the continuance of what is indeed a virtual violent crime. A crime that destroys lives, and in a growing number of instances, ends them.

Common sense alone should dictate the appropriate addressing of cyber-abuse. If exercised, such an extreme double standard would not exist between the physical and virtual realms we simultaneously navigate in our daily experience. If a man were to stand up in a movie theater and begin screaming insults and obscenities at someone he takes issue with for some reason, the theater staff would demand he stop immediately, not to mention many other upset movie-goers witnessing his behavior while having their evenings interrupted. If the man did not cease his behavior, the staff would remove him from the premises or call the authorities who would do so, regardless of how justified the man felt in inflicting his abuse.  If a woman in a grocery store began harassing another shopper and pressed the intercom to broadcast unsubstantiated and defamatory claims about that person to the rest of store, she would be asked to leave her cart full of groceries and exit the premises immediately. If she refused to leave, the authorities would be called to escort her out of the building. These are two exaggerated examples that may, on some level, seem ridiculous. They would seem that way only because the social norms and accepted standards of our physical society generally prevent these situations from becoming commonplace realities. However, in very sharp contrast, we see these realities playing out daily in the public domain of the internet.

If our legal system, and accepted social standards, do not permit violence, assault, abuse, harassment, slander and/or the defamation of others designed to maliciously destroy a person’s reputation, career, relationships, dignity, and life as a whole, how then can the architects and operators of the internet allow these crimes to proliferate so rampantly over their websites, search engines, and social media networks? Shouldn’t the builders of the internet, and various hosts of its social media sites, have a fundamental obligation to protect visitors from third-party abusers? Shouldn’t they refuse to allow visitors to arbitrarily and anonymously post vicious and destructive comments or private data about others online? Shouldn’t they be accountable for providing an open channel for cyber-abusers to intentionally plant false realities, blatant lies, harass, threaten and relentlessly humiliate their victims, often driving them to consider or fulfill suicide? Shouldn’t they prevent these individuals from deliberately exploiting their platforms to propagate vitriolic virtual violent crimes to a potential audience of millions? Those are the questions. Ones we need to be asking. And more importantly, answering.

Cyber-abusers are solely responsible and accountable for the cruel and heinous devastation they purposely inflict on the lives of their targets. The architects and operators of cyberspace, and the social network systems within it, certainly cannot be blamed for the specific actions of these online criminals. However, just because they cannot be blamed for the abuse itself, does not remove them from the responsibility of hosting the poorly regulated services it plays out on. And it does not excuse them from neglecting to exercise basic common sense or moral decency in devising their practices, policies and procedures for dealing with the heinous and pandemic crime of cyber-abuse. If it would not be accepted in the physical world, they have an obligation to ensure it is not accepted in the virtual one. Crime is crime. Cruel is cruel. That is true whether it be online or off. So how could either of these go ignored; or worse yet, accepted?

It is time for the architects and operators of cyberspace, and hosts of all the social network platforms it is largely comprised of, to sit down in their boardrooms and ask the toughest questions of all. How many lives have already been destroyed by what we have built? And what are we going to do about it? As online victim suicide rates continue to rise, doing nothing can no longer be an option.