Post by Marty on Aug 12, 2013 18:37:35 GMT
If this comes across a little callous I apologize. I'm not trying to be, I'm aiming for realistic. But it's a fine line and one easy to slip off without realising it...
Last week a 14 year old girl took her own life after apparently being bullied online by unknown trolls. It's generated a lot of emotion over here but sadly not much in the way of debate. A couple of newspapers have kept the story going, but mainly, it seems, merely just to score points with their mouth-engaged-before-brain rhetoric.
The basics of the story surround a girl called Hannah. She hung herself after receiving months of abuse on a site called Ask.fm, based in Latvia. The site allows for anonymous posting and sounds pretty much unmoderated (not completely though). It has about 60m users worldwide.
Hannah's father called for the owners of the site to be prosecuted for manslaughter for allowing such things to happen. Strangely, he doesn't want the trolls themselves to be sent to jail - the very ones who were actually POSTING the abuse.
Which leads on to the latest development: a review by Ask.fm executives has revealed that 98% of the abusive posts actually came from the same IP address as Hannah's posts did. There is the possibility then that Hannah herself wrote some or most of the abuse herself. The only other possibilities are those who also use the same IP (i.e. her own family) or someone with access to that IP (officially or unofficially). Of the other 2%, apparently there's a teenager in Belgium right now who is shitting himself because he joined in the abuse ("I didn't think this would happen" or words to that affect). There will no doubt be others.
Of course, if Hannah had been posting abuse to herself it begs the question of why she actually hung herself. Even if she hadn't (have) posted anything the same question remains.
My initial thoughts when the story first broke and people starting accusing the site (and the internet in general) were firstly that there was probably more to it than just cyberbullying. I still feel there is something deeper to this and I think some dark little secret will eventually leak out some time in the future.
My other thoughts on the matter were in the domain of parental responsibility. Whilst I felt sorry for the grieving father I couldn't also stop myself thinking that he was blaming everybody else and not taking any responsibility on himself whatsoever. Given how much we know about the darker side of the internet (grooming, bullying, etc) what had he done to protect his daughter from that side of the net?
I'm not talking necessarily about snooping on her and checking on everything she did but did he ever have a talk with her about the perils of the internet (before she was allowed free reign on it). Did he ever tell her that the internet is full of all types of people and some of them are not very nice, that some of them are not who they claim to be, that some people are just so overwhelmed with the feeling of anonymity that they will say spiteful things without any regard for the person they are saying them to because they seem to switch off from the fact that that person is a human being? Did he ever tell her that should she find herself in such a situation where something on the internet is bothering her she could come talk to him so he could help her? I get the feeling he did none of these things (I get the feeling a lot of parents don't) but I know damn well I'd have such a chat with my own child (if I had one) before allowing them their freedom on the net.
I don't particularly want to dwell on this particular case (being in the UK means I have to be particularly careful of what I say about it) but I've highlighted it as a starting point for this topic. I'm interested in what people think about cyberbullying.
Who's to blame the most? The unmoderated or badly-moderated sites that allows you to post pretty much anything? Well, even well-moderated sites can have problems with people posting nasty stuff so where would you draw the line there between culpability and not? Would I be blamed if someone posted such things on this site whilst I was away from it for a little time and someone then killed themselves because of those posts? It's all a matter of perspective.
Perhaps the trolls themselves? Well yes, to more of an extent. But, again, where do you draw the line between freedom of speech and criminal speech? Is "I wish you'd kill yourself" the same (or similar enough) as "Go kill yourself" in terms of incitement? The last time I saw there was no law about being a nasty bastard. It's how you go about being a nasty bastard that's the key.
Parents/guardians? Aren't they supposed to protect their children from this kind of thing? But how much can they really do? They can't hover over their children's shoulders watching every little keystroke they type and page they browse. At least, not once those children reach a certain age. But how many of them actually have a "talk" with them about it or just leave them to their own devices? There are enough stories regularly in the news decrying the perils of the internet for children so you'd think a little advice and guidance would be a good thing. After all, we tell them not to talk to strangers in the street. Well, you can't stop them talking to strangers on the net but you can damn-well make sure they know how to talk to them safely.
I've not gone in-depth here (despite the length of this damn post!) but only touched on the surface. When you think about it you can go a lot more into the ideas of freedom of speech, freedom of expression, self responsibility, etc. Oh, and if it seems like I'm defending the cyberbullies in some of my points, I'm not really. I'm just pointing out that nothing is black-and-white and hopefully we can go into some of those points more deeply.
I'd really be interested to hear from some parental view-points (like Billy and Coriana). I feel I may have sounded harsh against some parents...
Last week a 14 year old girl took her own life after apparently being bullied online by unknown trolls. It's generated a lot of emotion over here but sadly not much in the way of debate. A couple of newspapers have kept the story going, but mainly, it seems, merely just to score points with their mouth-engaged-before-brain rhetoric.
The basics of the story surround a girl called Hannah. She hung herself after receiving months of abuse on a site called Ask.fm, based in Latvia. The site allows for anonymous posting and sounds pretty much unmoderated (not completely though). It has about 60m users worldwide.
Hannah's father called for the owners of the site to be prosecuted for manslaughter for allowing such things to happen. Strangely, he doesn't want the trolls themselves to be sent to jail - the very ones who were actually POSTING the abuse.
Which leads on to the latest development: a review by Ask.fm executives has revealed that 98% of the abusive posts actually came from the same IP address as Hannah's posts did. There is the possibility then that Hannah herself wrote some or most of the abuse herself. The only other possibilities are those who also use the same IP (i.e. her own family) or someone with access to that IP (officially or unofficially). Of the other 2%, apparently there's a teenager in Belgium right now who is shitting himself because he joined in the abuse ("I didn't think this would happen" or words to that affect). There will no doubt be others.
Of course, if Hannah had been posting abuse to herself it begs the question of why she actually hung herself. Even if she hadn't (have) posted anything the same question remains.
My initial thoughts when the story first broke and people starting accusing the site (and the internet in general) were firstly that there was probably more to it than just cyberbullying. I still feel there is something deeper to this and I think some dark little secret will eventually leak out some time in the future.
My other thoughts on the matter were in the domain of parental responsibility. Whilst I felt sorry for the grieving father I couldn't also stop myself thinking that he was blaming everybody else and not taking any responsibility on himself whatsoever. Given how much we know about the darker side of the internet (grooming, bullying, etc) what had he done to protect his daughter from that side of the net?
I'm not talking necessarily about snooping on her and checking on everything she did but did he ever have a talk with her about the perils of the internet (before she was allowed free reign on it). Did he ever tell her that the internet is full of all types of people and some of them are not very nice, that some of them are not who they claim to be, that some people are just so overwhelmed with the feeling of anonymity that they will say spiteful things without any regard for the person they are saying them to because they seem to switch off from the fact that that person is a human being? Did he ever tell her that should she find herself in such a situation where something on the internet is bothering her she could come talk to him so he could help her? I get the feeling he did none of these things (I get the feeling a lot of parents don't) but I know damn well I'd have such a chat with my own child (if I had one) before allowing them their freedom on the net.
I don't particularly want to dwell on this particular case (being in the UK means I have to be particularly careful of what I say about it) but I've highlighted it as a starting point for this topic. I'm interested in what people think about cyberbullying.
Who's to blame the most? The unmoderated or badly-moderated sites that allows you to post pretty much anything? Well, even well-moderated sites can have problems with people posting nasty stuff so where would you draw the line there between culpability and not? Would I be blamed if someone posted such things on this site whilst I was away from it for a little time and someone then killed themselves because of those posts? It's all a matter of perspective.
Perhaps the trolls themselves? Well yes, to more of an extent. But, again, where do you draw the line between freedom of speech and criminal speech? Is "I wish you'd kill yourself" the same (or similar enough) as "Go kill yourself" in terms of incitement? The last time I saw there was no law about being a nasty bastard. It's how you go about being a nasty bastard that's the key.
Parents/guardians? Aren't they supposed to protect their children from this kind of thing? But how much can they really do? They can't hover over their children's shoulders watching every little keystroke they type and page they browse. At least, not once those children reach a certain age. But how many of them actually have a "talk" with them about it or just leave them to their own devices? There are enough stories regularly in the news decrying the perils of the internet for children so you'd think a little advice and guidance would be a good thing. After all, we tell them not to talk to strangers in the street. Well, you can't stop them talking to strangers on the net but you can damn-well make sure they know how to talk to them safely.
I've not gone in-depth here (despite the length of this damn post!) but only touched on the surface. When you think about it you can go a lot more into the ideas of freedom of speech, freedom of expression, self responsibility, etc. Oh, and if it seems like I'm defending the cyberbullies in some of my points, I'm not really. I'm just pointing out that nothing is black-and-white and hopefully we can go into some of those points more deeply.
I'd really be interested to hear from some parental view-points (like Billy and Coriana). I feel I may have sounded harsh against some parents...