The Times Magazine 5
So when you see a “groundswell” of
“support” whenever a controversialist invokes
freedom of speech to say “what everyone’s
really thinking”, we can’t know how many
actual, real people agree with what’s being said
and are “really” thinking it, and how many of
those “likes” and retweets are from trolls and
bots, to further polarise internet communities
on social media. We don’t know whose support,
and agreement, we’re listening to.
What we can see is that, over the past
decade, internet communities have become
more polarised, and the rhetoric more
intense and abusive, from real, existing, non-
anonymous people who have soaked up the
internet for so long, they have come to see
this bot/troll-popularised way of speaking
as... unexceptional. The bots and trolls have
created a new normal. I’ve been on Twitter
since 2009. I didn’t receive my first rape or
death threat until 2012 – they were practically
unheard of before then. Now, in 2020, like
most women, I’ve lost count. We have rapidly
come to think of online abuse of ourselves,
and others, as unexceptional: “That’s just
what it’s like.” But I haven’t received increasing
rape and death threats in real life. It’s only on
social media.
The problem with social media is that
“freedom of speech” online is wildly out of
legal whack with “freedom of speech” in a
pub or on the street. Only last week, the
Labour MP David Lammy was told that his
investigation into online threats was being
dropped by the Metropolitan Police because
Twitter refused to assist in its investigation.
The tweet in question was from Mikolaos
Nichaloliakos and read, “Are you hanging
from a tree monkey boy. You will hang
from a lamppost if you’re not careful.” It had
been “liked” 12,000 times. If someone had
threatened to lynch Lammy to his face, in a
stadium, where 12,000 people had cheered
them on, both the abuser and the stadium
would have faced an easy prosecution for
racially aggravated harassment. If “freedom
to listen” exists, then what kind of freedom do
we have, as listeners, when our representatives
are repeatedly, publicly threatened with
lynching or, in the case of female MPs, rape
- and nothing happens? That sounds to me
like a curious kind of unfreedom to me – an
undermining of democracy. With millions
of anonymous accounts active, we know
neither who we’re talking to nor who’s
responding to us or threatening us, and
why. A true “freedom to listen” would tell
us this: it would be reported on the news,
in the same way as the weather: “Today, six
million troll-bots from Iran delivered a heavy
shower of antisemitic tweets,” or, “A weather
front of far-right bots from Russia dumped
more than five million ‘likes’ on to Donald
Trump’s campaign.”
“Freedom of speech” means that,
theoretically, if we don’t like what’s happening
on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or Instagram,
we can take our free speech elsewhere. But,
of course, we can’t: these four social media
platforms have an almost total monopoly
on public communication. And, as report
after report has shown, polarisation and
conflict are good for their business models:
in 2017, a study by New York University
showed that on Twitter, each expression of
“moral outrage” on the platform increased
engagement with a post by 20 per cent. And
each 20 per cent increase is a straightforward
increase in customer attention, advertising
revenue and profit.
So, coming back to online freedom of
speech, the controversial “freedom of speech”
advocated by Laurence Fox and Toby Young
isn’t what those in repressive countries would
think of as freedom of speech at all: it is,
when you boil it down to the bones of facts
and numbers, the provision of controversial
free content to gigantic, unaccountable
monopolies, all being blankly “cheered on” by
millions of bots and trolls run by countries
hostile to western democracy.
Every day, I wonder why someone doesn’t
start an alternative social media platform
where no one can be anonymous, and the
terms and conditions firmly state that anyone
engaging in bigotry or abuse will have their
account and IP address banned, permanently.
We know there’s a market for it: everyone who’s
ever encountered bigotry and abuse online, for
a start. Why would they not migrate to this
new arena, on the first day it started, and
never look back at the old, rotten platforms?
And it would be interesting to see, on
this new, accountable, regulated platform,
how many of those who currently talk about
“freedom of speech” would be able to cry,
“See – I’m just saying what everyone’s really
thinking,” when we have the freedom to see
who’s really listening to them.
When the boot is on the other foot. n