Ford: Social media must set rules to protect women against online hate – Calgary Herald

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Computers didn’t invent hate and vitriol.

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The worldwide web didn’t invent misogyny, toxic masculinity or predators. All of this has existed, usually hidden in polite society, for generations.

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What the Internet did was open Pandora’s Box and give all of the above a global anonymous outlet through the profusion of so-called “social media.” Very little of this is social, defined as “the interaction of the individual and the group, or the welfare of human beings as members of society.”

I suppose there could be an argument made that how social media works in the real world is just as it is defined. Except, ask any woman in the public eye how social media treats her. Ask a teenager how she feels about being a target.

Ask Canada’s Governor-General Mary Simon how sociable she finds it. As of Feb. 13, her office has shut off all comments left on its sites, citing waves of harassment, “abusive, misogynistic and racist engagement” and “a greater number of violent threats.” Simon’s office sent out a message saying “all those who consult our information can do so in an environment that is respectful to all.”

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Surely there is a touch of sheer irony in the timing of this: the day before Valentine’s Day, a special 24 hours devoted to love, romance and more than enough gooey sentiment for the rest of the year. I doubt, though, that the trolls who anonymously leave hate messages have the wit to see the irony as they chalk up yet-another “uppity” woman taken down.

At what point do we cry “enough”? When are the people – men, of course – who own Google, Twitter and other social media sites going to set the kind of rules to allow for civil discourse, for comments that respect everyone’s personal agency? For starters, let’s demand an end to anonymity. If you want to post nasty and vitriolic insults, at the very least have the guts to put your name to it. Only a coward hides behind a “handle.”

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Only a weak coward would target young girls who are especially vulnerable to cyberbullying. Study after study shows that more than half of all Canadian girls are targets for such harassment, without much legalities to protect them. (And lest the mean girls think they are not guilty in such teenage exchanges, they should be aware their actions will stay with them, like, forever.)

But when anyone suggests more “truth” in posts, more insistence on being able to identify the harassers, the freedom card gets played. I can already hear the outcry: What about those brave protestors in Iran, Russia and China, for example, who risk imprisonment and maybe death if they are identified? There’s a false equivalency if there ever was one. The bottomfeeders harassing women – and the LGBTQ communities – are not the few and the brave. They are the many and the weak.

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I feel sorry for women in the public eye – journalists, politicians, television personalities – who have no option but to be on social media. They cannot hide behind a facade. They are exposed and they are vulnerable. They become targets for grievances or just garden-variety hate.

I’m of an age where if you wanted to tell me how misguided I am, one had to physically write a letter – one began “Dear Godless Bitch” – or get me on the telephone. One “brave” soul managed to get into the building, find my office and stand at my door and express his displeasure about a column I had written in a series of four-letter terms with the occasional foray into the pluperfect, a verb tense he was unlikely to recognize as meaning the actions he was suggesting I do had already been done. It was an interesting encounter up to the point I picked up the phone to call security. Now all such creeps have to do is log on in their basements and hurl epithets at their targets.

As can be imagined, I am not on social media. I don’t have to be. My job doesn’t require it. My self-esteem and self-image have long been forged through experience and age.

It’s long past time we reached out to the vulnerable with words of courage and hope until governments strengthen the laws that so far have failed so many.