Hate crime. We all know that it’s a bad thing but are we prepared to deal with the fact that many online communities are rife with it?
I was reminded of this recently by the disturbing post from Cath Elliott ‘An Occupational Hazard?’ documenting the abuse she suffered after wading into a debate on Comment Is Free over Tubecrush and The dubious joys of perving over fellow passengers online.
Elliott has cherry-picked some comments from the ensuing fallout which continued over on another site:
“Another ugly, sex-is-negative, skater-arounder of Islam and lover of diversity whilst living in Norwich, puritanical feminist, who’s wormed her way onto the Grun’s commentariat payroll after bombarding its message board for years with stupid fucking comments. Biatch!”
“I know fuck all about this person. but one thing just jumps out at you with that picture! DEFINITE LESBIAN!”
“can someone put her back in hospital please”
“At least your blog is accurately named: http://toomuchtosayformyself.com/ I usually find that stuffing her mouth full of cock usually shuts women like you up.”
Did you cringe? Gasp in shock? Bang your forehead? I did. I was also reminded that every day the moderators at Tempero have to be retained by some of the UK’s top message board owners to review, edit, or remove this sort of behaviour* – either as legal protection or with the simple aim to keep a community a nice place to be.
[*In case you're wondering Tempero makes access to support and counselling available to staff who may become affected by some of the content they are exposed to either daily or as a one-off. Another occupational hazard I guess.]
Communities are harsh
It’s hard because obviously we love communities, value freedom of speech, and think online interaction is usually a good thing but we are under no illusions that the anonymity of commenting online can lead to some unacceptable behaviours.
Just to be clear a hate crime is “any criminal offence that is motivated by hostility or prejudice based upon the victim’s disability, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, or gender words. This includes pictures, videos, and even music.”
Often it’s the kind of stuff people may not ever dream of saying in public but something changes in the safety of an online community where someone can be relatively anonymous or egged on by ‘the pack’.
The challenge is, that as it gets easier and easier to set up a community, we don’t want people to become so comfortable operating interactive spaces that they overlook protecting users’ basic legal and human rights. Abuse such as that experienced by Elliott seems clearly unacceptable and probably illegal, she took the only recourse possible by contacting the site hosts, but should it have needed to get to that point?
How can you avoid hate in your community?
Communities offer some amazing opportunities for brands and organisations to host or engage in conversations with users but before you can get something you have to be prepared to give something.
You wouldn’t host a party without thinking of the guest list, location, and safety of the guests. Dedicated and, in some cases, professional community management is central to distinguish a community from a vicious or even illegal platform for abuse.
Just to be clear EVERY website, not just community ones, are legally required in the EU to have a facility to contact the site administrator but if you’re really dedicated to running a valuable community think about going above and beyond to make your community a nice place to be. Be proactive in keeping it clean.
It strikes me that we could all do with a little less hate online.
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