The Internet is not only a kaleidoscopic gift of surprise, but also a co-contaminating partner of terrible information.
“Social Media Councils.” by podnosh is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
About Internet & Social Media Platforms
Speaking to the Internet, the majority of individuals are familiar with it. In fact, the Internet was established in 1969, making its history is only roughly 50 years. To exaggeration, it is a drop in the ocean. However, its pace of development makes it difficult for people to track, and it has rapidly infiltrated every aspect of people’s lives and work in high concentrations. There is no doubt that the evolution of the Internet is accompanied by the emergence and rise of various social media platforms, forming a huge and brilliant human social activity circle, the gap between people’s access to information is narrowing. Unfortunately, there are many problems and a series of bad content spread in the corners behind it, including bullying, harassment, violence, hate, pornography, and so on. Debate on the issues around that have intensified recently.
How & Why The Problematic Content Is Distributed On Digital Platforms?
Martin Heidegger argues that the essence of technology is by no means anything technological (University of Twente, n.d.). In other words, most people’s comprehension of the Internet is limited at the level of its function and design. However, as a tool, it is silently affecting people’s lifestyles, behaviour patterns, logical thinking, and so on. The Internet has broken geographical and temporal barriers, connected the world into inseparable social circles and substantially weakened people’s access to information. There is even a slogan that ‘Everyone is equal in front of the Internet’. As a result, as an independent individual, human beings have the potential to explore a broader world, encounter more people and master more extensive information. Conversely, the convenience makes it easier for problematic content to be published on digital platforms.
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Further analysis indicates that the reasons for the distribution of these contents mainly come from two aspects: individuals and social media platforms.
From the perspective of individual, anonymity of the Internet seems to provide human with a mask that allows them to speak out beyond the noise of the world, vent their emotions, and even engage in unexpected online hooliganism, such as Football hooliganism. What’s worse, there are even some user groups who create and sell these problematic resources for profit, which affects the social atmosphere. In a report, Newman (2015) explained that the Internet brings out the worst in human beings, and that these maskers do not believe that any violent acts they commit are human responsibility. This implies that in the mass incidents, the vast majority of netizens tend to have a kind of fluke mentality and a frame of mind that the law cannot be enforced when everyone is an offender, thus, their behaviour and speech lost due reason and judgement.
From the perspective of social media platforms, it allows the emergence of terrible and extreme content to cater for users’ tastes to a somewhat level, achieving the purpose of user addiction, such as American politics. In addition, algorithms are even utilized to deliver these contents to different user groups based on their personal preferences, in order to obtain more attention and maximize profits. Personal and social media platforms have both accelerated the accumulation of problematic information, which resulting unpredictable risks and negative consequences.
“Jump on the social media bandwagon” by Matt Hamm is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
Case & Why Should Block The Distribution Of Problematic Content?
The rapid development of the Internet has provided immensely convenience and assistance to everyone. However, everything has two sides, the tendency of information flattening is becoming more and more significant and numerous social and cultural issues are gradually exposed as time goes by.
Take cyberbullying as an example. In 2018, an Australian child star, Dolly Everett, who unexpectedly went popular due to an advertisement photo, suddenly received a lot of abuse from strangers on the Internet. The malicious words had such a negative impact on her physical and mental health that she committed suicide after suffering from online violence.
“Cyberbullying Blamed For Australian Child Model’s Suicide, Hundreds Grieve For Dolly Everett | TIME” by TIME. All rights reserved. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF9idp5Zobk
The incident attracted widespread public attention, a crowd of people revelled, and the bell tolled for whom. The anonymity of cyberspace and the environment of “free speech” have destroyed lives, and the list goes on. One study indicates that the lifetime victimization rate of cyberbullying ranges from 20.8% to 40.6%, and those who were cyberbullied are twice as likely to attempt suicide (Luxton et al., 2012). Furthermore, according to relevant research data, Internet suicides in South Korea account for around a third of the country’s total suicides, which is positioned as one of the highest suicide rates in the world (Luxton et al., 2012).
It can be seen that the problematic content has become one of the factors that wreaking havoc on the social atmosphere, seriously deteriorating the network environment and affecting the social values of the individuals.
Who Should Be Responsible For Stopping The Spread Of Problematic Content & How?
The problematic contents are constantly emerging and attracting user’s attention in various ways, which may cause irreversible consequences. The relationship between that and netizens is similar to brown glass bottles and male Australian gem beetles. Therefore, it should be stopped and rigorously regulated from three dimensions: individuals, social media platforms and governments.
From the individual dimension, netizens should be cautious in their words and actions, and put themselves in the shoes of others. Cyberspace appears to exist in a small electronic device, but it is indeed a public environment beyond imagination. Casual remarks and inappropriate information may be viewed by thousands and spread widely, and even abused. Additionally, people should timely and actively use functions if they discover problematic content, such as reporting, to contribute to the creation of a green Internet in their tiny efforts. Especially in the face of online bullying and harassment, it is better to adopt the advice of “Speak even if your voice Shakes” expounded by Dolly Everett.
From the dimension of social media platforms, the primary criteria are to comply with the laws of the countries where they operate, prevent and limit the dissemination of false information, and block rather than glorify harmful posts (Siripurapu & Merrow, 2021). Beyond that, platforms should set up content filtering policies to make up for the lack of audit and avoid prioritized users to prevent the extension of black industry chains, such as the Nth Room in Korea. As the party with the most vested interest, social media platforms have more incentive and ability to strictly regulate terrible speech, instead of using these as a steppingstone for platform traffic competition means.
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From the dimension of governments, in the case of filtering and censoring undesirable content and existing legal loopholes, the Internet produces a large amount of junk information and noise, thus, the government should take the initiative to control it as the dominant player, purify and establish an orderly network environment. Initially, in terms of motivation, governments are more willing to purify cyberspace due to the existence and proliferation of problematic content is also a destruction of social stability and order. For example, the Indian government has launched help lines and network communities to contain cybercrimes (Kaur & Saini, 2022). Furthermore, in terms of ability, governments have more strong public authority. Based on the premise of guaranteeing cultural information exchange, it can better constrain netizens and establish a harmonious society by issuing laws and regulations to manage the network environment. In addition, governments might even take formal education of media literacy and cybersecurity as a priority for all citizens, especially adolescents and the elderly (D’ Virgilio, 2022). These measures not only protect the rights and interests of users, but also strengthen network governance and purification.
Conclusion
While creating a diversified spatial pattern of human life, the information technology of the Internet nonetheless brings new challenges to the network governance of countries, especially how to prohibit the spread of problematic content on digital platforms. This interlocking with the individual, social media platforms, as well as governments, which require collaboration to build a positive atmosphere in the network society, making it a better tool.
The best attitude towards technology is to treat it as an interloper of life, whose benefits and drawbacks are entirely dependent on users.
Reference List
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpqCK6chOIA
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