Throughout the past decade, the Internet
has changed the way we as a society socialize. The broad spectrum of social
media options has proven to connect humanity instantaneously. Although these
social media sites have been able to link peoples thoughts and ideas over a
small playing field, it has created a cluster of negativity. Throughout the 20th
century, bullying was done in person, or should I say, face to face. But the
dotcom era has drastically changed the way people show their emotions and
opinions in the form of cyber bullying and trolling. People tend to be crueler
towards one another when they have a screen in between them instead of being at
the same place to settle their issues. Human civility has decreased due to
social media and the question that needs to be answered is: what can be done to
stop cyber-bullying and trolling? Throughout this paper, I will analyze three
potential solutions that can improve human civility in the online atmosphere.
Anonymity
has boosted self-confidence amongst online users for they are more confident in
presenting their opinions to their audiences without being able to be judged.
This has proven to work both positively and negatively in the online community.
Those of whom wish to have a pleasant and well informed discussion are able to
do so while being anonymous. They feel safe from the others negative comments
for they do not know who they are. This is especially useful in young adults
and youths that frequently use online social media, such as Yik Yak, for some of
those users have social or depression issues and cannot handle being judged by
others. Now on the other hand, anonymity opens a whole new door for those who
enjoy disrupting a discussion with negativity. The anonymity feature allows
them to repeatedly present condescending remarks upon a conversation without
anybody knowing who it is. It is essentially giving both the nay-sayers and
those that are thoroughly into the conversation a chance to express themselves.
Anonymity is a decent temporary solution to the issue, but does not present a
way to limit the number of trolls or cyber-bullies.
All social media sites are full of algorithms that
control different aspects of the site. Some of these algorithms control what
its users can and cannot say, the number of characters, the anonymity factor,
and many more limitations. But for a lot of social media websites, there are loopholes
to these algorithms. Natasha Lomas, a writer for techcrunch.com says: “Trolls will
always want to shout loudly, but let’s hope our algorithms aren’t always so
dumb as to actively help
subvert online social spaces that should be rich”
(Natasha Lomas). In many cases, these algorithms are very weak and make it easy
for trolls and cyber-bullies to wreak havoc on online socializing sites. If
smarter and more dependable algorithms are created, it could potentially
drastically decrease the amount of negativity being spread across the Internet.
Natasha also mentions “the technology industry needs is far smarter algorithms
that do more than take a crude measure of volume to determine which content
floats to the top. We need mainstream services that build in user support
structures to protect against these types of malicious gaming tactics — by
making it harder for trolls to mobilize to subvert platforms for their own
fringe ends” (Lomas). The smarter the
algorithm, the more difficult it will be for a troll to hack into a site and
disturb other users. This solution seems promising, but who is to say that by
creating smarter algorithms, the trolls do not become smarter and figure out
new ways to works around them.
An increasingly more common way of
controlling trolls and cyberbullies is by letting users have some control over
what others say. One of these abilities is a “Report This Person” option.
Supercell has created a few online gaming app’s, such as Boom Beach and Clash
of Clans, that allow for their users to communicate with one another. Along with
this feature comes the report button that can be used when a user sees another
user being disrespectful or disrupting the discussion in a negative way. Many
other social networks have features similar to this, such as Facebook. When
people report issues they are having with others on Facebook, they are sent to
the report center and overlooked by those who work in the report department. “When something gets
reported to Facebook, we'll review it and remove anything that doesn't follow
the Facebook Community Standards.
We don't include any information about the person
who filed the report when we reach out to the person responsible” (https://www.facebook.com/help/103796063044734).
This feature allows social media users to have more control over what people
are saying. It would be more difficult to locate trolling and cyber-bullying if
only the Facebook or Supercell team had to find all of its users that were
disturbing the online peace. The “Report This Person” feature narrows down to
what was millions of users per site to a much smaller group of people that
could potentially be trolls or cyber-bullies. Once the head of the sites have
found these people, they are able to conduct disciplinary actions or warnings
to those users, some of which can potentially kick them off of the site. This
solution makes it easier to find out the source of the trolling and
cyber-bullying by having others detect them and report them to the social media
sites report system.
Ultimately there will always be
trolls and cyber-bullies, but there are ways of preventing them from disrupting
social media sites. Overall the best tactic would be to combine making smarter
algorithms and enforcing the report feature on all social media sites. If both
of these are embedded in social media sites, the number of troll and
cyber-bully encounters will decrease.
No comments:
Post a Comment