Fernando Guzman

ENGL 133 Writing and Rhetoric for English as a Second Language Students

Peters, Jason J.

March 8, 2017

Online Hate is Going Too Far

The internet gives people the power of knowledge at any given moment of the day and

the ability to connect with friends and family at an instant. One of the main uses of the internet

is communicating with people from all over the world. People have the ability to view and

respond to anyone with feedback that could be supportive, constructive, or critical. The first two

are usually always welcome when it comes to online comments, but the last one is not.

Commenters online can have a tendency to say very detestable things towards others. Most of

the time these remarks go by like nothing happened, but should they? Hateful messages need to

stop on the internet. Consequences should be carried out to users who leave extremely

aggressive and hostile comments towards others in order to stop this undesired hate.

People have the ability to say negative statements on the internet and face little to no

repercussions. In order to stop this, first, we must understand why people are so hateful online.

According to the article, Perpetuating Online Sexism Offline: Anonymity, Interactivity, and the

Effects of Sexist Hashtags on Social Media, anonymity plays a big role in this. The article

mentions a framework called the online disinhibition effect to try to show the concerns

regarding the negative effects of anonymity online. This is used to understand what specific

parts of the internet make users engage in bully-like behaviors that they wouldnt normally

perform in person. The online disinhibition effect is not inherently negative, but can manifest
as toxic disinhibition, which includes negative behaviors such as flaming, trolling, and

cyberbullying (Fox, Cruz, Lee). If the confronter knows that the person on the other side

doesnt know who they are, they are more comfortable to spue out hate. People wouldnt usually

say the offensive things they write on the internet to people if they were in person and actually

face to face.

When a website allows users to be anonymous, there should at least be some regulations

on what people are allowed to write. Twitter in particular is a prime example of a site where a

lot of users tend to leave hateful tweets. Twitter doesnt require you to use your full or real name

which allows people to mask their identities. Given this anonymity, Twitter is an optimal place

for prejudicial attitudes and behavior. According to a study conducted over the social media

platform Twitter, There were 512 million tweets in our resulting tweet dataset...Overall, our

strategy was able to identify 20,305 tweets containing hate speech (Silva, Mondal, Correa,

Benevenuto, and Weber). This could be a reason why people see hate online as normal, because

they are exposed to it constantly. There are even people who make accounts solely on leaving

negative replies on popular posts or videos. Again, the large majority of these negative

comments are done without punishment

Yes, there are examples of users having to face consequences over things they have said

online. One example where a certain user was punished for the hateful messages he was writing

happened on Twitter. A popular user, Milo Yiannopoulos, was banned permanently from

Twitter for tweeting racial comments towards actress Leslie Jones. Yes, this does show that

websites are taking action and serving out repercussions, but there is more to this story. Milo

Yiannopoulos was the only person who was banned from Twitter, even though many of his
supporters were saying even more appalling comments towards Ms. Jones. These people were

more hateful than Yiannopoulos, yet nothing happened to them. They faced no consequences at

all for their vile comments. While banning Yiannopoulos was a big step forward, Twitter only

cut off a tiny piece of the problem of the overall hate that is on the platform.

To help stop the pursuing flow of hateful comments online, more suitable penalties need

to be regulated. Things that are often brought up as suitable punishments are part time bans and
stopping the user from commenting for a period of time. The part time ban could work very well

for websites for social media sites and their hate problem. This would stop the user from writing

hateful messages or else they wont be able to communicate with their friends. The amount of

time can be modified by the severity of the hateful remark. Simply stopping the user from

writing comments for a period of time is affective as well, but not as severe as the part time ban

which might not be as effective. The user will still be able to see everyone elses posts and will

still feel connected even if they personally cant post.

These methods have has successfully worked in a particular streaming website called

Twitch. This site allows people to stream themselves while playing video games and let others

communicate with you all in live time. To stop hateful commenters you could have moderators

that monitor the chat and look out specifically for offensive messages. One way to deal with

these commenters is the ability to give people timeouts, where they are not allowed to leave

messages for ten minutes. Another way is by blocking communications for a certain amount of

time or indefinitely if they so wish. The streamer is even allowed to block certain hateful words

from ever popping up in the chat which also helps deal with the harassing messages.

An argument that is very often said to stop regulation on the internet is everyones right

to freedom of speech. All Americans understand the importance and the value that the First

Amendment give us, but there is an extent to where it could go. Freedom of speech has a limit

and it stops when there is a threat that could lead to the danger or harm of another person. In a

case from 1994 Jake Baker and a friend Arthur Gonda exchanged many email messages, sharing

their sadistic fantasies and discussed the methods by which they might kidnap and torture a

woman in Baker's dormitory. Baker was sent to prison for violation of the law 18 U.S.C. 875 c.
This law reads, Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication

containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another, shall be

fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years (Fisher). A lot of the hate on the

internet is threats to injure or harm a person or one of their loved ones.

Some even want to change the First Amendment in order to be more up to date with the

technology that is now available. The thought process being that the founding fathers couldnt

possibly have imagined anything like the internet to ever happen. It is safe to assume that the

framers of the First Amendment...could not have conceptualized the substantial the amount of

harmful public speech that is expressed today (Pontzer). The internet is an incredible feat that

mankind has been able to accomplish, but in no way could have been predicted in the late

Eighteenth Century. Internet speech, the fundamental principles of the First Amendment law,

and what little precedent there is for regulating speech on the internet, it is apparent that some

sort of mitigation action both should and could be taken. (Pontzer).

The internet is an amazing place where anyone could share their views on anything that is

happening in the world, but there needs to be regulation. People are having to live with constant

hateful messages that could easily be stopped. By websites like Twitter implementing stricter

regulations on what users are allowed and not allowed to write, then the amount of hateful

comments will go down. Many people who dont agree with this have never been harassed or

were cyber bullied. Or they are the ones who write offensive messages towards others online

and dont understand the negative effects they have. There is no need for complete censorship

on the internet, just some moderation. While Internet speech undoubtedly merits some
protection, not all speech is the same, particularly speech that poses a legitimate threat to public

health (Pontzer).

Works Cited

Fisher, William. "Freedom of Expression on the Internet." Freedom of Expression on the

Internet. N.p., 14 June 2001. Web. 08 Mar. 2017.

Fox, Jesse, Carlos Cruz, and Ji Young Lee. "Perpetuating Online Sexism Offline: Anonymity,

Interactivity, and the Effects of Sexist Hashtags on Social Media." Computers in Human

Behavior, 52 (2015): 436.

Pontzer, Laura. "If Words Could Kill: Can the Government Regulate Any Online Speech?."

Pittsburgh Journal of Environmental and Public Health Law [Online], 5.2 (2011): n. pag.

Web. 8 Mar. 2017

Silva, Leandro, Mainack Mondal, Denzil Correa, Fabricio Benevenuto, and Ingmar Weber.

Analyzing the Targets of Hate in Online Social Media. n.p.: 2016.