Essay 3

William Covert

Professor Werry

Rws 200

4/15/15

Solutions to Online Incivility

A serious problem affecting our society today is the issue of cyber bullying and the general lack of civility people display when they participate in online discussion. Many people out there seem to lose their sense of ethics and morality when they sit behind a keyboard and computer screen and are not in a face to face interaction with another person. These people, also known as “trollers” or “spammers”, seem harmless and many people feel as if online incivility isn't a serious issue however these people would be wrong. Many people have written articles and done studies that show that trollers and spammers have the power to turn the tide of public opinion on important social, political and scientific topics. Cyber bullies have much more power over others then many people would normally think they would and often times they suppress the intelligence and creativity of the victim. Andrew Stafford said that these people who lack online civility “have the potential to drive some of our brightest voices out of the public life altogether” and this is unacceptable. In the articles we read there were some different approaches to solving the issue of online incivility and in this essay I will discuss some of the solutions I have read about as well as analyze their relative strengths and weaknesses.

The first solution, and most widely supported in the articles I have read, is to eliminate anonymity on the internet. The idea behind this solution is that people who are anonymous on the internet have no fear of consequences or effective retaliation. They remain hidden behind the cloak of anonymity and are able to say whatever they feel like saying because the victims of these people only know their aggressors by their handles (or usernames). Many philosophers including Plato believe that if human beings were able to be invisible or able to do things anonymously, then we would all do horrendous acts. In one of Plato's' parables called the ring of gyges, he wrote about a shepherd who found an invisibility ring deep in the earth which, when worn, turns the wearer invisible. The man put the ring on and over time began performing acts of incivility and at the culmination of the parable, the man rapes the queen, murders the king and takes the king as his wife. Plato believed that any man would have acted the same as the man from his parable if he were able to not be held accountable for his actions. Different journalists such as Julie Zhuo and Tim Adams believe that the anonymity is the problem that is causing incivility on the internet and want to abolish online anonymity. Tim Adams also talked about “deindividuation” which is the state people are in when anonymous. In this state of deindividuation, people fear no consequences and have no problem saying many things that they would never say if they were face to face with other people.

Another solution I have read about states that we need programmers to create better software and algorithms to help us filter out the comments and posts that are attacks. Many women are threatened online with rape and other physical acts of violence and these software programs would help to eliminate personal attacks such as these. It would be hard for algorithms like these to be put in place due to the free speech right that we are provided in the first amendment, however if these apps or websites put this into their terms and agreements then people would have no choice but to follow the rules or be kicked off the app. This seems like a very promising solution because although it may be hard to calibrate the algorithms and there may be bugs in the beginning that need to be worked out, it would stop a big part of the incivility happening online if the threats and derogatory comments or posts were able to be recognized and terminated before they ever reached their target. This seems like a promising solution to me but it isn’t the full answer to our problem. These algorithms and programs would only help to stop the reception of the hateful or useless messages but they would do nothing about curing online incivility. It would only force the trollers and spammers to find other ways to send their pointless and hateful messages.

            The final solution, which seems the most promising to me, is the solution of tummeling. Tummeling is where tummlers promote good discussion online but are able to take bad discussion, and people who practice it, down from the website. In other words, tummlers “are catalysts and bridge builders”. Their main priority is to promote good conversation. They will strike up conversations with people online and try and coerce people who either don’t often speak or who have a good response to the topic into speaking on the subject. Also one of their duties, besides promoting good discussion, would be to discourage and decrease less productive speech. Tummlers would have the power to take down nonproductive speech and block the trollers and spammers who propagate it. Having a team of tummlers to monitor and promote or demote the different discussions they see would improve the quality of online speech tremendously. This may seem very similar to having algorithms and programs take out hateful speech, but I find this solution to be much more promising for 2 reasons. First off, Tummlers are able understand what is and isn't acceptable whereas a program can only search for what it has been told to look for. Secondly, tummlers can promote healthy, positive discussion to the online community in addition to demoting harmful or pointless speech.

            In this essay I have talked about the different solutions to the issue of online incivility and I assessed their relative strengths and weaknesses. I believe that tummeling is the best solution for this problem because they are best equipped to not only handle the negative discussions, but encourage the positive ones as well. Online incivility is not a problem that will manage itself, and whatever the action may be, something needs to be done about it.

Works Cited

Thompson, Clive. “Smarter than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better.” 2013. 77-81. Print.

Lomas, Natasha. "#Gamergate Shows Tech Needs Far Better Algorithms." TechCrunch. Web. 15 Apr. 2015. <http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/18/gamergate-tactics/>.

Stafford, Andrew. "Who Are These Haters That Poison the Well of Our Discourse?" The Sydney Morning Herald. Web. 15 Apr. 2015. <http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/who-are-these-haters-that-poison-the-well-of-our-discourse-20120411-1ws5c.html>.