David Cameron has recently been campaigning
for tighter rules to be put on Internet websites that will prevent child abuse
pictures from being accessible to the public. There has also been a call for
stricter rules on social networking sites after a woman was attacked by so
called ‘trolls’ on the popular site Twitter last week, receiving tweets from a
young man threatening her with rape.
The situation arose after the woman,
Caroline Criado-Perez, a feminist campaigner, had spent the week successfully
campaigning for the Bank of England to feature the classic female novelist Jane
Austen on the new £10 note.
When it became widespread news that a woman
novelist was to grace the British banknote, Caroline received a torrent of rape
threats and abusive language on her twitter account for supporting the idea.
Since then, her followers and thousands of other Twitter users have demanded
that action is taken after the abuse escalated and Caroline was threatened with
rape by one male user. In fact, the worst of the abuse was from men, with one
tweeting, “I will find you.” When another woman stepped forward to defend
Caroline from the abuse, she became the next subject for the online trolls, who
quickly turned on her.
How has it become the norm for anyone -
men, women and teenagers - to sit behind a computer screen and send abuse to
someone else? It is bullying for the twenty-first century. For the majority of
people, the internet is an amazing phenomenon that if employed in the right
way, can help with work, socializing, obtaining information, buying and
selling, booking and adverting… The list is never-ending. But for a small
amount of simple-minded people, they use it to send abusive messages and belittle
others without ever revealing their true identities.
Perhaps that is just the way of the world,
people have a good thing, but there are always those that have to go and spoil
it. Or perhaps this isn’t something we should blindly accept. Some are now calling
for Twitter and other sites such as Facebook, to add an ‘abuse button’ to aid
people who are subject to threatening language. An online petition started a
week ago had already received 15,000 signatures by only the next day.
What do you think? Will adding an abuse
button solve the problem? Or should move be done to tackle the issue of
online-abuse? In this case, two men have been arrested for sending abuse to the
two women. They have since both been released on bail. But not every man
sending abuse will get arrested, and 99% get away with it, without any
consequences. Some are arguing that by naming and shaming the men who troll
women like this, any future employer doing research on them as a possible
employee will come across the abuse they sent and it will harm their
employability. But is this enough?
What are your thoughts on the subject? Leave
a comment and let me know.
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