Does the internet provide too much anonymity?
I saw this video blog the other week from a link in my Twitter stream from a social media user that I follow, and it prompted me to write about something I’ve been meaning to write a blog post on for a long time. And that is how people seem to hide behind or use the anonymity that the internet provides to either way too aggressively put across their point; or, as the video says, bully others online. It happens in almost every form of social internet that I have been on, and it is becoming more and more common.
I posted a clip of Desmond Tutu from a U2 concert that I went to last Summer on my YouTube channel, and within a few days had to delete a couple of comments that people had added, largely making racist remarks. There are countless videos on YouTube where the comments section has just turned into a big USA vs. UK argument, with the people on the US side saying that the English would be speaking German if they hadn’t have joined in the War, and the UK side either calling them “Yanks” or referring to the time when America was colonised by the English. 99.9% of the time, this discussion is completely irrelevant to the video the comments are against.
Whenever you go onto anything like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, review websites, or blog comments; you seem to find people full of hate and arguing.
I do think the internet and social side of it are great, but at times they can be one of the worst things in the world because people abuse them.
This is very true and a very sad state of affairs. Whenever I find an interesting article on the web I almost never read any of the comments, because the chances are that they will degenerate into argument or abuse, often with anyone who offers an alternative opinion being labelled as a troll.
Whatever happened to ‘I may not agree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it’?
By: maggieberney on July 4, 2010
at 10:20 am