Shoaib Daniyal - Twitter: time to ask: is abuse killing the social network in India? // Umair Haque - The problem of abuse is the greatest challenge the web faces today
NB: Abuse in place of civil dissent is a form of censorship. Verbal hooliganism in India is practised not only by mouse-click political activists; but also by famed news anchors. The destruction of speech and its replacement by abuse and sneering, is a means of silencing the human mind altogether. If this is the new dawn of greatness, only God can help us - DS
There is nothing new about political disagreement – but social media plumbs the level of debate to new depths. In fact, the people who log onto social networks to abuse behind anonymously are in all probability fully functioning members of society. They have friends, jobs, family and are likely to be deferential to strangers they meet on the street. But as they log onto social media, bathed in the neon glare of their screen, a transformation occurs. Unhindered by the strings of the real world, they become abusive and cruel. In effect, Twitter is a massive, real-time, global version of the Stanford Prison Experiment.
Umair Haque: The problem of abuse is the greatest challenge the web faces today
The imminent death of Twitter is being prophesied all over the world. In a popular article titled Why Twitter’s Dying (And What You Can Learn From It), British economist Umair Haque blames this squarely on abuse that has made “social media a nasty, brutish place”. “Twitter could have been a town square,” Umar writes, “but now it’s more like a drunken, heaving mosh pit.”
In India, much like the cruel guards in the Stanford Prison Experiment, this abuse is magnified by the fact that many abusers have official backing from authority figures in the form of politicians. Speaking to Scroll.in, Rajdeep Sardesai claimed, “In some cases, my worst abusers are followed by popular and respected political personalities.”
Trolls and politicians
The Bharatiya Janata Party, the party with the strongest presence on social media, has often indulged abusive users. In fact, Prime Minister Narendra Modi even met a few abusive but influential pro-BJP tweeters last year in a carefully publicised event. On Monday, Amitabh Kant, the Niti Ayog CEO, tweeted out an anti-Arvind Kejriwal message, originally composed by a group calling themselves “India against Presstitutes”. “Presstitute”, a portmanteau of “press” and “prostitute”, attempts to demean journalism by comparing it to sex work and is a common term now on social media, highlighting just how commonplace bigoted views have become.
So dire is the situation on Indian Twitter that in some cases things have even moved beyond verbal and mental abuse. In several recorded cases, users on Twitter have openly spread rumours of communal violence – a situation that could easily spark off actual violence.
In an example of just how being on social media can turn normal men into near-monsters, last week Congress politician Digvijay Singh was actually mocked and abused after his daughter died from cancer. In 2014, the daughter of Robin Williams had faced similarly toxic abuse after her father’s death, leading to her temporarily quitting Twitter.
Even after these egregious examples, Twitter has usually ignored instances of abuse. But the flood of abuse – among other factors ¬– has meant that Twitter is now looking down into the abyss. The social networkfailed to add any new users in the final quarter of 2015, even as rival social network Facebook has 5X of Twitter’s active users. Twitter’s stockhas been on a sharp, regular decline for the past 12 months.
Twitter’s slide
In 2015, Twitter’s chief executive Dick Costolo admitted issues with his companies abuse policy. “We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years,” he said in an internal memo leaked to the press. Recently, Twitter put in a phone verification requirement that allows it to check if a member has other accounts that have been suspended as a result of abuse.
What Twitter has not budged from ¬– and what might be at the core of the issue – is to disallow anonymous accounts. Facebook, for example, has a “real name” policy that debars anonymous accounts. “There is value for disallowing anonymous people,” Rajdeep Sardesai points out. “I am all for open forum but what we have is inciting violence, hatred, lies and slander.”
In practice, anonymity means a free pass to abusers. “Even when I am the subject of lies and slander, I have no legal recourse,” Sardesai complains. “Defamation is not applicable to social media. It’s like putting my head into a cobra’s den.” Twitter already has much to worry about. But one of India’s most leading journalists comparing it to a cobra’s den is surely a rather loud alarm for the social network.
http://scroll.in/article/807521/as-rajdeep-sardesai-quits-twitter-time-to-ask-is-abuse-killing-the-social-network-in-india
There is nothing new about political disagreement – but social media plumbs the level of debate to new depths. In fact, the people who log onto social networks to abuse behind anonymously are in all probability fully functioning members of society. They have friends, jobs, family and are likely to be deferential to strangers they meet on the street. But as they log onto social media, bathed in the neon glare of their screen, a transformation occurs. Unhindered by the strings of the real world, they become abusive and cruel. In effect, Twitter is a massive, real-time, global version of the Stanford Prison Experiment.
Umair Haque: The problem of abuse is the greatest challenge the web faces today
We have created an abusive society. We have
normalized, regularized, and routinized abuse. We are abused at work, by the
very rules, norms, and expectations of our jobs, at which we are merely “human
resources”, to be utilized, allocated, depleted. We are abused at play, by
industries that seek to prey on our innocence and literally “target” our human
weaknessses. And now we are abused at arm’s length, through the lightwaves, by
people we will never meet, for things we have barely even said. We live in a society
where school shootings are the rule, not the exception, where more people will
have taken antidepressants than not…and now one where nearly everyone will have
been abused on the web…for a random, off-hand, throwaway comment, an idle
thought, something trivial, unremarkable, meaningless.
In India, much like the cruel guards in the Stanford Prison Experiment, this abuse is magnified by the fact that many abusers have official backing from authority figures in the form of politicians. Speaking to Scroll.in, Rajdeep Sardesai claimed, “In some cases, my worst abusers are followed by popular and respected political personalities.”
Trolls and politicians
The Bharatiya Janata Party, the party with the strongest presence on social media, has often indulged abusive users. In fact, Prime Minister Narendra Modi even met a few abusive but influential pro-BJP tweeters last year in a carefully publicised event. On Monday, Amitabh Kant, the Niti Ayog CEO, tweeted out an anti-Arvind Kejriwal message, originally composed by a group calling themselves “India against Presstitutes”. “Presstitute”, a portmanteau of “press” and “prostitute”, attempts to demean journalism by comparing it to sex work and is a common term now on social media, highlighting just how commonplace bigoted views have become.
So dire is the situation on Indian Twitter that in some cases things have even moved beyond verbal and mental abuse. In several recorded cases, users on Twitter have openly spread rumours of communal violence – a situation that could easily spark off actual violence.
In an example of just how being on social media can turn normal men into near-monsters, last week Congress politician Digvijay Singh was actually mocked and abused after his daughter died from cancer. In 2014, the daughter of Robin Williams had faced similarly toxic abuse after her father’s death, leading to her temporarily quitting Twitter.
Even after these egregious examples, Twitter has usually ignored instances of abuse. But the flood of abuse – among other factors ¬– has meant that Twitter is now looking down into the abyss. The social networkfailed to add any new users in the final quarter of 2015, even as rival social network Facebook has 5X of Twitter’s active users. Twitter’s stockhas been on a sharp, regular decline for the past 12 months.
Twitter’s slide
In 2015, Twitter’s chief executive Dick Costolo admitted issues with his companies abuse policy. “We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years,” he said in an internal memo leaked to the press. Recently, Twitter put in a phone verification requirement that allows it to check if a member has other accounts that have been suspended as a result of abuse.
What Twitter has not budged from ¬– and what might be at the core of the issue – is to disallow anonymous accounts. Facebook, for example, has a “real name” policy that debars anonymous accounts. “There is value for disallowing anonymous people,” Rajdeep Sardesai points out. “I am all for open forum but what we have is inciting violence, hatred, lies and slander.”
In practice, anonymity means a free pass to abusers. “Even when I am the subject of lies and slander, I have no legal recourse,” Sardesai complains. “Defamation is not applicable to social media. It’s like putting my head into a cobra’s den.” Twitter already has much to worry about. But one of India’s most leading journalists comparing it to a cobra’s den is surely a rather loud alarm for the social network.
http://scroll.in/article/807521/as-rajdeep-sardesai-quits-twitter-time-to-ask-is-abuse-killing-the-social-network-in-india
