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IT ISN’T news that the internet is awash with hateful content. But it is still shocking to put yourself in the shoes of somebody who has been on the receiving end. Game designer Zoë Quinn’s experiences during the Gamergate affair were extreme, but are a chilling lesson in how internet hate campaigns can ruin lives (see “I survived a tsunami of online hate and now fight to help others“).
The psychological drivers of online abuse are well understood. Anonymity emboldens some people to post things that they would hesitate to say. Trolls can get swept up in a mob mentality, the thrill of transgression, or the twisted belief that it is all a bit of harmless fun.
These are not excuses. Online abuse is a crime, pure and simple.
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One long-standing problem is that the law is slow to catch up. Quinn recounts how the police were often powerless to act.
In some places, that is changing. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in England and Wales has stated that online hate crimes are the same as real-world ones. Posting material motivated by “hostility or prejudice” is just as illegal as shouting racist abuse or daubing islamophobic slogans. For the perpetrators that could mean jail: incitement to religious or racial hatred carries a sentence of up to seven years.
That is an overdue clarification, but it still leaves much to be desired. The new CPS guidelines don’t explicitly cover misogynistic abuse; the law is also toothless to tackle brokers who buy and sell personal information and hence enable abusers to discover where their targets live.
But perhaps the biggest change needed is in public perception. Online abuse is shockingly common, but rarely prosecuted. The CPS has invited victims to change that. But unless people come forward, the scale of the problem will remain hidden, and the tyranny of the mob will go unchallenged.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Fight fire with fire”
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