Online Abuse and the Real World


I am disappointed that I shall miss David Ormerod’s mini-lecture on 13 March as I shall be in Berlin. The event, ‘Abusive and Offensive Online Communications: the current criminal law and the need for reform’, focuses on the recent Law Commission Scoping Report on that topic. I was looking forward to the originally scheduled event because I had a question which I now cannot ask.
The Report and a Summary can be accessed here. The Report is an admirable piece of work but I am very much aware that few will have time to read it in full; indeed, I suspect that, admirable though the Report is, it would have been more admirable if it was less exhaustive and a damn sight shorter. Even I, semi-retired and with a real interest in the dual subject matter, had to slog through it in stages.
The Summary, which may well be more influential than the full report as I cannot imagine that policy-makers will read the full version, seems to me to drive its readers to the conclusion that greater regulation is required. But a full reading of the Report left me feeling that online communication is generally more regulated than offline abuse and that only the problems arising from group abuse online had me thinking that Something Must Be Done.
It seems that there is a great danger that the mere addition of the term ‘online’ to anything will invoke an excessive reaction – one might even suggest that it is abused. I am, to say the least, wary of such reactions. Over the last few years, Graham Smith’s Cyberleagle blog posts and his tweets have pointed up many areas where proposals appear to be driven by irrational fear of the online. My own favourite recent one is the suggestion that the billionaire masters of the Internet have a duty to stop knife crime because (shock horror) the perpetrators and members of gangs don’t communicate via handwritten correspondence like, well, practically nobody. Neil Brown’s demolition of the CJEU judgment in Buivids shows that the ‘shock horror, it’s online’ phenomenon is not a purely UK thing. I fear that copyright may be next and have restricted myself to singing ancient folk songs when in public places for fear that I may be filmed – though I fear Dashing Away with a Smoothing Iron may incite grooming and What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor encourages abuse.
But, tempted though I am to ramble, I will stick to the very serious topic of online abuse.
In the course of my reading of the Law Commission Report, I received a death threat or two (one from my wife and one from a granddaughter), racist abuse (don’t ask) and (somewhat puzzlingly) homophobic abuse (unenlightened walking footballers). All were offline and all were from friends of a sort and family; all made me laugh and despite the threats I remain alive. Banter may well often be the mask behind which real nastiness might hide; it really often is also just a bit of fun and helps make the world go round. But, of course, in another context, the various remarks would not be funny. In recent weeks, I have witnessed two racist comments in exchanges with friends – one an entirely innocent attempt to describe a Nepalese person and one just plain nasty. If I had seriously suggested that the latter had been reported to the police, I would have been laughed out of town. But had either been online the situation might have been different.
My extreme test of the difference between online and the real world arose quite recently thanks to the odious people who thought that their Bonfire Night experience might be enriched by the burning of a cardboard Grenfell Tower. Since it was a gathering of the odious, no offence (in both senses) arose. But, once the activity was posted online, offence (again in both senses, in my view at least) arose.
The main difference is context. Isn’t it always?
Change the context and the offensive becomes inoffensive and, crucially, vice versa.
Now ‘context’ gets many a mention in the Law Commission Report but, almost exclusively in the phrase ‘online context’ or the like. What I did not see addressed is the alchemic ability of the Internet to turn what is inoffensive in one context into something highly offensive online. I suspect that there are groups of people saying the most appalling things about, say, Anna Soubry MP but, so long as they keep those comments to their corner of the pub, I don’t imagine she cares any more than the police should. Spout those views in public and the situation may be different though I am aware of a certain irony in my example.
Equally worryingly, social media can take ill-judged tweets and turn them into poisoned darts. Had I reposted comments received in banter with a wounded comment, the senders would have seemed like heartless bullies – and that’s not entirely fair.
So my question for David Ormerod would have been ‘How the hell are we going to do context in an online “context”’?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Favourite Walks - A Walk through Bowood

I recently put together instructions for a local walk for publication in the parish magazine and on the Calne Without parish council website. For the tiny minority of readers of my blog who might visit the local area, here it is. If you read it here and intend to do the walk, tea and biscuits at mine are an extra reward. Circular 6 mile walk, mainly through Bowood Estate  This walk just about allows you to stay within the boundaries of Calne Without but stretches your legs and includes some lovely countryside, especially on the path through Bowood. It is just over 6 miles (nearly 7 if you start from the Lansdowne Arms).   1a Start at the Black Dog Inn/Gurkha Baynjan Restaurant on the A4 (now a fine Nepalese restaurant but still with a public bar), where there is ample car parking and an opportunity for a pre-walk coffee or a post-walk pint, or, for locals, start from your own home.   1b It is also possible, and perhaps more appropriate given the amount of Lansdo...
Read more

Don't Jump Off the Roof, Dad

I want to die with the little dignity I have intact.  I have become increasingly frustrated by the sober and respectful debate about assisted dying. While everyone seems to be acting from the best possible motives (at least by their own lights), the issue that concerns me and so many of my friends and acquaintances is being ignored. My greatest fear – and it is shared by so many old people – is not that I die in pain from an incurable illness and suffer for months. That’s an awful prospect but only relatively rarely does it become a reality. My greatest fear is that I live without dignity, an incontinent, gibbering burden on my nearest and dearest. That a very real prospect for many of us. For many of those who have witnessed a slide into such a status for those they loved and respected, that fear is close to terror. The assisted dying debate proponents dare not extend their argument because their perceived weakness is ‘the slippery slope’. As a result, a very real issue is bei...
Read more

Batty Regulation

We’ve got bats and liked them, until the regulations made us regret our tolerance of them as the bills and complications mounted. Sitting with a glass of wine in our small courtyard in Wiltshire and watching the bats swoop from their nesting places was a real pleasure. We’d even drag friends out from summer dinners to watch the acrobats in action. We liked the bats. But now I fear that our experience has left everyone who has heard our tale determined to eradicate any bats they find and to tell nobody. That’s not good for conservation and it’s all down to an obsessive over-regulation that puts the interests of bats over those of humans and scarcely compromises at all. When we bought our house 25 years ago, we knew that one part of the property had bats in it, probably as a resting spot for Greater Horseshoe. When we carried out some conversion work on that part of the building, we abided by the restrictions that then applied - restricting work to the winter months. Quite volunt...
Read more