All hail Gayle Flakenthal, who has
put a voice to what we have all been thinking: something has to be done about
those damned trolls. Especially the nerds.
In a Washington Times, “Internet
trolls, Anonymity and the First Amendment,” she says that “the time has
come to limit the ability of people to remain anonymous” online. The reason:
anonymous identities allow trolls to act with impunity, and clog up comments
with annoying comments. Commenters have polluted the Internet “with false
accusations and name-calling attacks.” For that reason, newspapers should ban
anonymous comments.
I say, bravo. It's about time
someone said that name calling is a terrible perversion of the first amendment.
I know what the bleeding hearts may
say[1]:”This
argument is not only inaccurate, it's also dangerous: online anonymity, while
allowing trolls to act with impunity, also protects a range of people, from
Syrian dissidents to small-town LGBT activists and plenty of others in
between.”
What a load of tripe. Did Gandhi
make his protests under the user name britishOutOfIndia? Of course not[2].
Did Socrates pose his questions as an anonymous user of a public forum? I think
not[3].
They faced down their critics with a steely glare.
This is the first world. We don’t
need the protection of anonymity any more. We have lawyers. And we know they
work because they sure charge a lot for their services. Why should the civility
of online comments be corrupted all for the sake of cowtowing to the odd
third-world citizen in a basement, calling his government silly names? And how
do we even know he isn’t just trolling himself? It’s just too risky.
Luckily, many newspapers have
already banned anonymous comments, and "civility" is often cited
as the justification in discussions. So
there is some light at the end of the tunnel. I agree that there may be a small-town
schoolteacher who fears persecution for her political views to her local
community but wants to give a voice online. But freedom of speech means that
you have an obligation to stand up and state your name. The same goes for the
the gay teenager who wants to talk about it online but isn’t quite ready to
come out. Too bad: the first amendment wasn’t put there to help you stay in the
closet. It was there to allow us to have civil comments at the end of articles.
Some may argue[4],
“The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, and anonymity, and the Supreme
Court has made these same arguments about safety and anonymity for decades. In
1960, the Court explicitly upheld a speaker’s right to remain anonymous.”
My response to that is: Really?
Would you want a cell phone that was
seven years old? Then why do you want to your opinion on free speech to be
based on a court ruling that is fifty years old? Those judges are now dead.
They probably weren’t taking into account that they were giving vocal power to
nerds.
Of course, there may be other ways
to deal with trolls that don’t go as far as banning anonymous users. I have
heard that there has been some experimentation with “moderating” comments. This
cutting edge technology involves a editor or some appointed person who is
responsible for monitoring comments in a forum. That person would then be
allowed to “review” comments and then “remove” comments that are inflammatory
or libelous.
While that may work for many savvy
Internet sites, there are many who are not used to such newfangled technology.
Better we should just shut everything down.
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