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US, China can learn from each other on Internet
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DEAR editor,
As one who has followed with interest efforts by your government to crack down on “irresponsible” use of social media, I found a recent story in the New York Times of interest.
It pointed out that social newspapers and newspapers’ online comment pages were “losing the battle to trolls.”
The word “troll” comes from Nordic mythology, and in its origins meant often ugly beings who dwelled in dark places and who intended no good for human beings. In today’s world, trolls are those who use the anonymity of the Internet to sow discord, drop false and ugly charges, torment, or post the most vile and disgusting things.
The article was prompted by reports that the late comedian Robin Williams’ daughter had to close her Twitter account because, following her father’s tragic death by suicide, such ugly beings had posted the most god-awful stuff on her site, including doctored photos of her late father purportedly showing his neck bruised and distended from hanging. Ugh!
Every time one of my columns appears in an American newspaper, I also receive such troll activity on the papers’ online comment pages. After a version of my review of Thomas Pikety’s book “Capitol” appeared in both the Portland Oregonian and the Des Moines Register, various anonymous persons called me “socialist,” “communist,” and, in keeping with the constant assault of the right wing on public servants of all kinds, “another example of public employees who just want to suck ever more from the taxpayers.”
Accountability
I am a firm believer in free speech, but also that such speech cannot occur without accountability being attached to it. Yes, I have a right to say and publish my opinions and beliefs but I have to append my name to them so that others can hold me factually and ethically accountable for my comments.
It seems to me that whether or not one lives in a Western or “democratic” state or not, such is the minimal expectation that citizens should have of one another’s use of our power of speech.
Grave mistake
That we in the West first began allowing people to “shout out” anonymously on the Internet has been a grave mistake. If China can spare its people from having to suffer from such irresponsible, vile persons who lack the courage to put their names behind their views, then fine!
There is another form of “free speech” where I believe a degree of anonymity is beneficial. It’s the airing of video captured by cellphone or tablet that can reasonably aid citizens and authorities to better understand some event, whether of an act of terrorism or a form of public indiscretion, or even of graft, corruption, or misusing otherwise legitimate force.
Some of the greatest atrocities of the past might well have been cut short had these technologies existed. For not only is anonymous, libelous posting corrosive to citizenship, but so also are those acts of malfeasance of office or of outright harm to others that the perpetrators would wish to keep hidden from others.
Trying to find the right “balance” between free speech and accountability is always going to require adjustment and constant feedback. This is but one more instance of where China and the United States can learn from each other through the manner of respectful dialogue.
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