Should The Internet Be Policed?

[theeboredone]

I have contemplated this question every time I see unnecessary trolling, flaming, cyber bullying, threats, etc. etc. While there is a certain beauty to being anonymous on the Internet, allowing you to make courageous comments against powerful entities, it can also reveal a rather ugly side as well. Maybe I've been diving deeper, but it seems like I would be okay with some sort of policing of the internet, but I am open to change on this subject.

I want to preface this all by saying that I do believe in the first amendment, but I also believe in the concept of "Say it to my face". Essentially, is what you type on the internet the same thing you would be more than willing to say in person?

1. You just have to google "Cyberbullying suicide" and see all the horrific results one pulls up. Yes some mistakes are made by the "victim" themselves, but to see what escalates after that is just unbelievable to see.

2. Google is pushing Google+ through YouTube, by making their comments section just that. Yes you can still hide behind an alias, but a lot of people on Google+ use their real names. So a lot of these comments are now being seen by the person and not a username. Obviously there is no raw data on this, but I'd be curious to see if this tones down the unnecessary badgering.

3. There are communities that rely on usernames. Some of smaller portions (Smashboards), some of bigger (Reddit). Reddit came under fire a few years back with their "jailbait" thread. Imagine if people were forced to use their real names due to that being a law on the internet. Would we see more people get thrown in jail? Would people opt to find a darker/underground community, or would people hold inside their words and comments?

4. Interestingly enough in Britain, one can get arrested for making direct threats on Twitter.

On the flipside of all of this, I feel like it would be easy to literally give yourself another name, let alone get someone else in trouble. Imagine being accused of "threatening" someone on the internet, but you claim to have never used that website, let alone have said those words. I believe right now, it's way too easy to disguise yourself as someone else.

I dunno. I guess I'm looking at an angle to tone down all this unnecessary bantering. There's only so much logic and reason you can apply, until you realize it's not going to get through their heads.

 

[StealthyGunnar]

It would be very difficult to enforce, as you have mentioned.

But allow me to suppose of a scenario: Guy A is being harassed by Guy B in real life. Guy A decides to commit suicide to eliminate the suffering Guy B has put him through, and he does. Guy A's family learns of Guy A's suffering and decides to sue Guy B for murder. Now, a question: has a scenario like this ever occurred in real life, and if so, was Guy B held responsible for Guy A's suicide?

I ask because in certain cases one little thing someone says can be the thing that sets the person off. Should everyone who ever said something to this person then be held responsible for his/her death?

It's no doubt that cyberbullying is a terrible thing and has driven many to commit suicide, but as you have said, we in the United States have the right to free speech. It's a slippery slope, but I do not think the internet should be policed.

If such a law enacted the internet to be policed, it would just open the floodgates for the government to make any law they wanted to and file it under "national security" or "public safety" or what have you. It would be all too easy for our rights to be taken away one by one as we watch helplessly on the sidelines.

 

[theeboredone]

Obviously, certain measures would have to be taken. Just because you insult someone, doesn't immediately mean you are responsible for any coming actions. However, it is evident that some people to take it a step too far and play a huge role in what ends up happening to a person. There's also plenty of philosophical questions such as the value of freedom vs the value of a human life. Ask that to a parent who lost a child to cyber bullying vs someone who has never endured it. You'll get two different answers.

As far as your example goes, the closest thing that comes to mind were two university students who were roommates. You can Google it up, but the jist was that Roommate A left his webcam on to spy on Roommate B. Lo and behold, Roommate B is Gay and brings home another man to sleep with. This was either live streamed or later uploaded without Roommate B's consent, which eventually led to his suicide. Roommate A is currently in jail. It's a combination of both real life and internet, but it did start in real life.

To your point, yes it would be a slippery slope if the government passed such a law. However, then the responsibility falls on the people to ensure nothing like that happens. Whether it's through protest or not electing the wrong representatives.

 

[StealthyGunnar]

Obviously, certain measures would have to be taken. Just because you insult someone, doesn't immediately mean you are responsible for any coming actions. However, it is evident that some people to take it a step too far and play a huge role in what ends up happening to a person. There's also plenty of philosophical questions such as the value of freedom vs the value of a human life. Ask that to a parent who lost a child to cyber bullying vs someone who has never endured it. You'll get two different answers.

I was just trying to point out the grey area, but I agree with what you're saying here. From a purely rights-strained point of view, how easy would it be to advocate that hurting someone over the internet is an infringement of someone's right to pursuit of happiness? It's all very grey.. But someone could then say, "well, they didn't HAVE to go on the computer, use the internet, etc." This is an interesting topic.

As far as your example goes, the closest thing that comes to mind were two university students who were roommates. You can Google it up, but the jist was that Roommate A left his webcam on to spy on Roommate B. Lo and behold, Roommate B is Gay and brings home another man to sleep with. This was either live streamed or later uploaded without Roommate B's consent, which eventually led to his suicide. Roommate A is currently in jail. It's a combination of both real life and internet, but it did start in real life.

Interesting. I'd have to do some research into this, but I'm wondering if the sentence had anything to do with Roommate A impeding on Roommate B's rights. It seems like an adequate example, however.

To your point, yes it would be a slippery slope if the government passed such a law. However, then the responsibility falls on the people to ensure nothing like that happens. Whether it's through protest or not electing the wrong representatives.

I'm just very hesitant when it comes to enacting laws that infringe on human rights. I'm a big advocator of "those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." (I'm not trying to argue here that having absolute freedom on the internet is an 'essential liberty,' but you get my point.)

 

[#HBC | Acrostic]

Lol @ Tyler Clementi reference in 2014.

 

[Kadano]

I advocate against censorship. There are always people who behave better than they could afford to in the ruleset they act within, and there are always those who don’t. Rather than telling the latter “You must not! (Or else …)”, I think we should ask them and ourselves why they do.
Understanding has always been wiser than ignoring and I don’t see the internet being an exception.

Words are without inherent meaning. I don’t think over-emphasizing them is a good idea.

In the ideal world, there would be no need for anonymity nor identity. But all the gossip about famous people reminds us how overly occupied with social hierarchy stuff we still are, and yes, I am saying this is something that we need to overcome.

Now to give an opinion to the problems you presented that threaten the no-governance stance:
1. Bully problem: Bullying feels awful for the victim, but I believe it should not be seen as a problem that must be done away with, but seen as an opportunity. An opportunity to shed light on why the victim felt too weak to fight back and why the offender didn’t help him gain strength instead of attacking him.
I’m not for blaming the victim. I’m for understanding the situation and going the low-entropy route. Bullies don’t see themselves as the bad dudes, they always feel that the victim is fine with what they are doing to them, or else they wouldn’t do it, right? So, in a way, the social purpose of bullying might not simply be eliminating the weak, but eliminating weakness. This can happen by the victim committing suicide, and this can happen by the victim realizing that he has been a pushover and that he needs to step up for himself.
Again, I’m not saying the offenders are all good. Instead of choosing violence, they could always just tell the victim that they must not accept being treated like this by others and everybody would be better off if you ask me.
Therefor, I believe the optimal way to handle bullying is to teach empathy to the bullies and self-confidence to the victims.

Now, I’m pretty far from the original topic, internet censorship. And that’s because I don’t think it can help with this problem at all!
Let’s say I made nude pics of myself, and somebody publicized them. Now the expected route for a teenager to go would be desperation, fleeing from it. But I don’t believe this is a solution at all.
What I would want to do – not saying I’m sure that I’d have the strength for it! – is to not give a **** about it. Former friends laugh at me and lose their respect for me? That’s a behavior I would only tolerate if I hurt someone on intention and without regret. Nude pics don’t hurt anybody, and if someone has such a weak mind that he conforms to social pressure without reason, I prefer not having contact with them. In fact, I’d be happy for the opportunity to see how they act when it comes down to it! If it hadn’t, I would have lived in the illusionary world of false friends even longer, and I certainly don’t want that.

So, why do most teenagers (and I don’t even know if most of them do; you don’t see media reporting about how a young girl withstood peer pressure when nude pics of her went public anyway) succumb where they should stand strong?
Because they didn’t learn to. Their will was broken at some point in a way they could not make sense of in a positive way, and they resorted to giving up against pressure.
I say that we need to put more focus on that. Tell our children that they need to speak their opinion, even if it’s against their parents. Explain everything to them as best as we can. And do many other things, but I want to come back to the topic now.
Internet censorship. It does not strengthen children or teenagers. It doesn’t empower people under dictatorship either, so we should not accustom us to it or else we won’t notice the transition from democracy.
Internet censorship is not a good idea, it’s the result of being misled and losing sight of what’s important. I actually researched quite a bit about some topics that are so tabooed that some legislations have banned discussing them, and while I’d really like to explain why I think censorship is bad in these cases as well, doing so might make me liable to a prosecution in my country. I am not using any anonymizing services on smashboards, and I don’t plan to as all of them can be broken anyway, as we have learned from all those Snowden exposures. But isn’t that argument enough? Censorship (including laws that ban breaking it) effectively removes your ability to speak out against said censorship? That’s neither safety nor freedom. It’s just oppression, one step closer to dictatorship. And in my opinion, we already have global dictatorship with the monetary system as its mafia, but I think I’ve elaborated on offtopic stuff enough in this thread.

 

[AfungusAmongus]

The internet is policed already!

-Each online community has mods who enforce the rules. Harassers get banned from forums, games, and social networking sites. Many of these communities also let you discreetly block anyone you don't want to hear. Written or typed communication is inherently hostile to bullying because the victim has a permanent record of all his messages.
-Police and FBI agents can detect and punish cyber crimes. Hacking (for example) may lead to fines or even jail time. In the case of Tyler Clementi, the roommate who recorded him via webcam was punished for invasion of privacy.
-Saying mean or offensive things is allowed in some online communities to some extent. That is a good thing.

 

[FirestormNeos]

If the internet is to be policed, 4chan's gonna need SWAT units.

 

[Sparklepower]

The internet is policed already!

-Each online community has mods who enforce the rules. Harassers get banned from forums, games, and social networking sites. Many of these communities also let you discreetly block anyone you don't want to hear. Written or typed communication is inherently hostile to bullying because the victim has a permanent record of all his messages.
-Police and FBI agents can detect and punish cyber crimes. Hacking (for example) may lead to fines or even jail time. In the case of Tyler Clementi, the roommate who recorded him via webcam was punished for invasion of privacy.
-Saying mean or offensive things is allowed in some online communities to some extent. That is a good thing.

Mostly this, but I also have to ask exactly what you're asking should be policed.

By cyberbullying do you just mean people sending ill-intended messages to another? If that's the case, every site has a blocking and ignoring system, I feel this is completely unnecessary.

The situation you gave with the roommates primarily happened in real life. The only part that took place online was the uploading of the video. What kind of policing would prevent this? Nothing on the internet, as a video uploader would have no idea whether or not a video was pornographic, or if the people involved were consenting. The policing would have to take place in real life, there's nothing to be gained on the internet.

 

[The Smashing Samurai]

Absolutely not. The Internet is a source of free-ideas and contributions. No one, whether it be private corporations, nor the government, should police it. Doing so would take the very thing that people can freely express their opinion without fear of the censor.

 

[#HBC | Acrostic]

I have contemplated this question every time I see unnecessary trolling, flaming, cyber bullying, threats, etc. etc. While there is a certain beauty to being anonymous on the Internet, allowing you to make courageous comments against powerful entities, it can also reveal a rather ugly side as well. Maybe I've been diving deeper, but it seems like I would be okay with some sort of policing of the internet, but I am open to change on this subject.

No one is fully 'anonymous' unless you are using Tor or some other service to mask your activity from your internet service provider. However, if you access any databases or made any posts while off Tor then they can track you since they will just ask Google or a number of other service providers to assist in the investigation and they will comply.

 

[kiteinthesky]

There are so many First and Fourth amendment problems with regulating the Internet it's not even funny.

Sadly I fear this debate is soon becoming a moot point as governments and ISPs tighten their stranglehold on the net through copyright restrictions, spying, blocking undesirable websites, and cutting off Internet access completely in extreme cases...

I really don't think people understand how precious and important an unregulated, neutral Internet really is.