Apparently banning trolls from social networks isn’t good enough for some people. Russian politician, Yelena Mizulina, also chairperson of Russia’s Committee for Family, Women and Children, is campaigning to ban swearing on social networks.
In September 2012, a new law entitled ‘On the protection of children from information harmful to their health and development’ came into effect which immediately saw sites that contained content including drugs, suicide and images of child sex abuse blacklisted. Mizulina’s campaign calls for this law to be amended to also include banning profanities online.
If the banning of swearing online became a reality, this would affect ‘public’ online spaces such as social networks, social media and forums. Pages containing this offensive material would be blocked and added to a blacklist if not removed within 24 hours. This could be personal pages and blogs, but would also greatly affect brands; moderation rules would change, time spent moderating would increase and there would also be the potential drop-off of users and contributors. And imagine being responsible for putting together ‘the list’ of banned words. Where would you start and where would it end?
Indeed, there has already been an attempt by Russia early in 2013 to ban profanities used by its media outlets, issuing hefty fines and closure if used. As Ashot Djazoyan, secretary of the Russian Union of Journalists commented:
“The mass media that uses a harmless word from a certain lexicon will get a warning for the first time. But the second use of this word – even in the same article – will lead to its closure. This means if someone says something rude we practically lead the media outlet to a death sentence.”
Would brands face the same threat if the ‘no profanity’ law came into effect?
Protecting children online is a high priority, but is banning swearwords the right way to do this? Is it even feasible? What about all the offline swearwords? What if television shows, available on a media player, contained swearwords? Would that website be banned too? There are huge amounts of questions and grey areas raised by this. Goodness knows, it was a hard enough task and one that left Oliver Cromwell despised, four centuries ago, when he declared that swearing was punishable with fines, and persistent offenders thrown into prison.
It’s not about control, it’s about influence
“I don’t think people should be able to swear whenever they want. I just don’t want the federal government making laws about swearing. We should trust people’s own instincts about what is appropriate in any given situation.”
- Richard Dooling, Novelist and Screenwriter
Contrary to what many brands and companies, and as we’ve seen, governments, wish were true, social networks are as a general rule ‘free space’. Users have the right to comment, provide feedback and display anger if they want. We’ve seen too many social media #FAILS by brands who have underhandedly deleted their users’ negative comments and tried to manipulate the social media sphere for their own purposes. This often causes more harm than good.
Again, this all comes down to a solid moderation set-up with experienced community managers. When brands stop trying to control every post that appears in their Twitter feed or Facebook page and only step in to exercise authority when absolutely needed, they are likely to gain their users’ trust. And with swearing often appropriated to emotional responses or as emphasis, it’s a natural human reaction but arguably easier to ‘control’ online.
So should brands ban swearing? It’s all down to right time, right place. If you’ve got your social media platforms set up appropriately, you won’t have to – your users will reflect the micro-environment you’ve created and your guidelines, both written and alluded to.
This is more a question about what social media is all about; platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are worlds of their own – each made up of independent people, all with their own opinions and minds. Control? Never going to happen. Guidance? That’s more like it.
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