What is going wrong with social media platforms nowadays?
Social Media Platforms provide an open space for diverse people to interact with their thoughts and build social connections in the cyber area. The usage of social networking sites (SNSs) has become more advanced in recent years as commercial and political activities are emerging on SNSs. This “platform society” has brought public and private communication together and reshaped the media landscape (Van,2015). Individuals can articulate their opinions publicly or incognito on platforms that SNS endow “free speech” for users to speak.
Nevertheless, everything is a double-edged sword; this open and accessible space has recently provoked roughness, problematic behavior, and illegal acts. Cyberbullying and hate speech, and the spread of sexually exploitative videos through SNSs have increased. Many pieces of research indicate that cyberbullying and problematic behavior is global; it is an international phenomenon. 44% of the young Australian generation reported negative SNS experiences; over 50% of middle school students in Japan and Korea are dealing with this issue (Chun,2020, p.2). Besides verbal online bullying, hate speech and online sexual video content are rising on social media. However, the regulations of social media platforms are not strong enough to crash the problems. This essay will discuss how illegal content affects us and how we find ways to stop and regulate it.
Cyber-Bullying
In the past decade, offline bullying has repeatedly been seen as intentionally harming others, and victims hardly defend themselves (Olweus,1999). Cyberbullying is using electronic devices to abuse
victims without time constraints continually. It is more aggressive (Chun,2020), as online bullying can involve unaccountable perpetrators victimizing the victim. Perpetrators comment with violent words,
name-calling, or rumors spreading under the post on victims’ SNS, taking someone’s picture without permission, then uploading it to Twitter or IG to make fun of or insult them. Online can spread things viral with one click, bringing ruinous consequences to the victims.
Victims of Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying victims suffer from mental health issues even though the bullying has stopped; anxiety, depression, and attempted suicide will continue to affect victims. This might develop pessimism and increase the risk of suicide. According to research, 20% of participants have seriously thought of attempting suicide and tried suicide (Hinduja,2010, p.214). When you are aware of social news, it is not hard to hear tragedies about people killing themselves after bullying by someone from different age groups.
After son’s suicide following relentless cyberbullying, parents say school could have done more by CBS Chicago Retrieved from:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9DDeAUHr7g
Governments stopping online harmful content
According to the United States government, most state laws address different ways to regulate bullying issues. Although states have different methods of regulating, state laws barely address bullying as a criminal offense. Germany, in 2017 established the Network Enforcement Act targets social media criminally content for fines and penalties for failure to comply with the law. This act regulates SNS to submit public reports every half year to explain the content they deleted under the act’s standard (Doyle,2022, p.118).
The legislation in Australia not only tackles online bullying, harassment, and fake news but also legislates harsher punishments to have a sufficient deterrent effect. The Sharing of Abhorrent Violent Material Act of 2019 fines users for about 2.3 million AUD who breach the act or up to three years in prison. Besides the individuals, SNSs will also fine ten percent of the company’s annual profit (Doyle,2022, p.120). The Australian government uses fines to push the platforms to improve their regulations and governance.
Digital Sex Crime
Before digital growth, “online sexual violence” was defined as unpleasantness, and sexual approach or suggestion is not explicitly presented. Following digital development, online crimes are more common as pornography breaks down offline borders to produce, consume and spread online. The transformation of digital platforms has shaken up a crime venue for criminal activities. In Korea, sexual violence crimes climbed by 21.3% within ten years until 2020. Females are the most digital sex crime victims; statistics show that almost 90% are women (Jun, 2021, p.6). Digital Sex Crimes are horrifying and repulsive that traumatize victims and society. Perpetrators using social media to commit sex crimes in a more organized way have recently made digital sex crimes challenging to detect (Nuspact,2021).
The Nth Room
In 2020, the Nth Room in South Korea shocked the world. These horrific crimes reveal the vulnerability of regulations and problems in digital networking sites. This enormous sexual violence in Korea started in 2018; a man, Moon Hyeong-Wook, with the username “Godgod,” created eight Telegram chat rooms to upload sexual pornography with cryptocurrency payment. Cho Ju-Bin, with the username “Baksa” (Doctor in Korean), is the crucial perpetrator that lured females to film sexual exploitation videos by using seeking part-time sponsors as an excuse to ruin victims’ life. The Nth Room included blackmailing women, sexual exploitation, child porn, and other illicit videos collected and sold in different rooms (Kim,2021).
The Nth Room case: The Making of a Monster [Documentary on online sex crime in Korea] by The Korean Times Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGMgp8sup0w
This issue petrified Korean Society and prompted Koreans to request the government to take responsibility. Under the online sexual violence law in South Korea, the existing law is too weak to crack down the digital sex crimes. The government passed the National Assembly’s petition, which 100,000 people signed to urge harsher sentencing standards for the punishment of sexual violence crimes. Cho was finally sentenced to 45 years imprisonment and fined 10 million won.
Government reaction to the Nth Room
Focus on this serious sexual exploitation crime; the Korean government took a rational response by passing a new bill to sanction perpetrators for long imprisonment, and those who buy, watch and access illegal sexual content will also face sentences in jail and heavy fines that enlarged the punishment to people who are not proactive in the frontline crime but silently involved.
Although authorities have the power to change and make regulations, individuals, the Korean society, in this case, took a crucial part to object the discriminatory justice system too lenient towards sex criminals (Kim,2021, p.275). Through the collective social power to fight for justice and have a positive sense of response instead of doing bystanders to neglect the victims.
Telegram’s governance riddle with loopholes?
Telegram’s terms of service claimed they would remove illegal pornographic content on publicly viewable TG channels, but it was not to be mentioned in private group chats. Also, Telegram presents a confident attitude toward its security system so that others cannot read your messages (Badiei,2021, p.6). Emphasizing the users’ privacy is essential; however, it favors online crime. Telegram has no transparent process for cooperation with the governments. Korean law does not affect Telegram in the Nth room issue because it is a foreign company. It is indeed hard for SNS to scarify users’ privacy to meet all the government’s requirements; for instance, using Telegram chat groups to organize protest activities in Hong Kong or Thailand, as Telegram provides a high user privacy experience. However, in the Nth room case, does the self-governance of Telegram encourage sex crime activity?
How does Social Media Platforms stop those inappropriate or illegal content?
All social media platforms have the responsibility to have their policies to regulate the users. However, many blurry boundaries challenge the platforms to have an apparent content moderation. It is hard for the platforms to identify the complicated cultural questions, for instance, pornographic and sexually explicit. It has to be very careful to establish and enforce content moderation, as it might invade users’ privacy and security (Gillespie,2018, p.11). Reporting systems are likely available on all platforms, and service providers will pull down the reported post. New technologies like machine learning and automated application can identify criminal activities (Flew, 2019, p.40), but the effects might be hard to tell.
SNS companies’ cooperation with governments could increase the potential to stop the misbehavior content. The European Commission started working with social media platforms on a “Code of Conduct for countering illegal hate speech online.” Monitoring the posts of the platform that contain illegal content, it is still hard to remove all the inappropriate content (Cusumano,2021, p.1273). However, in Australia, the Crime Code Amendment Act requires the platforms must tell the Australian government when discovering content infringes the act. Also, this act covers all the content that is accessible in Australia, no matter whether the platform is based internationally (Doyle,2022, p.120).
Conclusion
Governments and social media platform companies are taking responsibility to keep updating the regulations to combat cyber problems and online crime issues. There is no absolute solution to defeat those troubles. Individuals also need to be responsible for those content and should not ignore it.
A bystander is also seen as a perpetrator that they do not offer help to the victims. Individuals should use the report system to report any issue to the platform to cease illegal behavior. The cooperation between social media platforms, platform users, and governments is crucial to perpetuating an amicable online ecosystem.
Reference:
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