Earlier quoted context omitted.
So I am asking because my views are only challenged inside my own head, hence the need for external thoughts. But firstly the "governments will come and do bad things" argument - yes this is clearly and obviously a major problem - but not one solvable by technology in anyway. Fixing violent dictatorships is a IRL problem - one that requires enormous effort and sacrifices (see Ukraine for obvious example). We cannot p…
I am of the generation and mindset that online abuse is not real. Straight up. Log out, turn off the screen and watch Netflix, take a walk and calm down, block the offending user. It's not real. >I suspect we need better support for police in prosecuting such things We do see that! But mostly people on Facebook. Here we have had judgements of people who posted threats on Facebook because it is tied to your real name.…
My main point is not that we need to lock up everyone who makes a threat, but that we as a society will have to adjust our standards to the new normal.
Once upon a time every conversation was fleeting, every discussion in a pub or bar was ephemeral. Even Einstein and Dirac would walk home chatting without fear of being overhead. Then someone imagined it would be wonderful for the whole word to hear the erudite wisdom of those two geniuses of our age - and Facebook and Twitter and social media made it possible for every conversation in every bar to be captured and recorded and published - and we found out that Dirac and Einstein were just sledging each other and most other conversations globally were worse.
The new normal is that, like speeding, most evenings, conversations in most bars actually broke quite a lot of laws, from hate speech to sexual threats and basic politeness. And now the police can hear them as can everyone else - and discretion does not work on this scale - we either enforce the laws or change them.
That's a conversation for each judiciary- and likely to be either a balkanisation of the social media world, or a race to the top (we can all have twitter as long as we all behave to the standards of the highest / politest society. I am not sure where I stand on that.
Is it serious - hell yes. We are looking at a global technology with global benefits for all humankind - and if we want to communicate globally we need to agree what the standards for behaviour are on this virtual stage - from contract law to human rights and freedom of speech. We are inevitably going to build closer contacts - Brexit is a salutary lesson - and how we deal with freedom of speech online is just part of the jigsaw - but a telling part.