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I have yet to see an article about Internet trolls and cyberbullying that addresses the nuances inherent in a couple of points: 1. Disagreement is inherent to
by parennoob 11y ago
I have yet to see an article about Internet trolls and cyberbullying that addresses the nuances inherent in a couple of points:
1. Disagreement is inherent to a lot of discourse. Social networks are not research papers -- some of the disagreement is going to be accompanied with strong displays of emotion. Where does the line between strong disagreement and bullying lie? If Anne tells Bob, "Bullshit, your arguments don't make any sense and you are just an arrogant cyberbro I DRINK MALE TEARS", is she cyberbullying him?
Should her access to Twitter be cut off, or would voluntarily blocking her on the part of Bob address this problem in a sufficient manner?
2. How to balance prevention of trolling with limiting self-expression? The outside world is not a perfect place where everyone engages in reasoned discourse either. Given that pub-sub systems like Twitter are the equivalent of everyone shouting their opinions loudly in the same street, how much of the unreasonableness inherent in human discourse do we allow to penetrate these social networks to keep them essentially human in nature and not turn into a LinkedIn style list of platitudes?
I wish the article went some ways towards addressing these. Instead it seems to focus on ad-hoc initiatives set up by a lot of people who (in my opinion) seem to not have any concrete ideas of what they are trying to accomplish. For example, one of the research papers linked [1] describes cyberbullying as including "...posting mean or hateful
comments, aggressive captions or hashtags". In my opinion this is a rather extravagant definition of the term and should be examined more carefully and revised per the points above.
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[1] "Detection of Cyberbullying Incidents on the Instagram Social Network" http://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.03909v1.pdf http://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.03909v1.pdf
- Zikes 11y ago> Where does the line between strong disagreement and bullying lie? Gregory Alan Elliot is drawing that line right now in Canada: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Elliott https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Elliott
- boopuyy1 11y agoI just thought it would be good to point out that you are creating a strawman. You've created an example that you acknowledge isn't cyber bullying, and use that to suggest that therefore cyber bullying can't exist in any form. It's a disingenuous argument at best.
- threatofrain 11y agoA straw man is a misrepresentation of someone else's argument, and the poster did not say something anything so unsophisticated as what you have suggested. Your argument, on the other hand...
- boopuyy1 11y agoNot to point out the obvious, but "is she cyberbullying him?" and "Should her access to Twitter be cut off" are both clearly attempting to misrepresent the argument of the other side. Just because they are rhetorical questions doesn't mean it isn't obvious what the poster is implying.
- threatofrain 11y agoThis is the parent-level post. There's no dishonest misrepresentation of anyone. The poster also didn't even come close to suggesting anything so unsophisticated as "therefore cyberbullying can't exist in any form!" That is an awful misrepresentation. The paragraph in question basically pushes the conversation toward, "Where are the brightlines?"
- gnicholas 11y agoActually, it's not a straw man. Laws (or codes of conduct, at universities) like this actually do exist. In the US, they are generally unconstitutional, but challenging them is expensive and time consuming. For a fairly comprehensive listing of such laws/codes and an analysis of their constitutionality (again, only for US purposes), see Professor Volokh's blog, now part of the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/category/bullying-bans/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/cat...