As you would expect, Mencap takes a hard line against learning disability hate crime. Everyone should be able to live their lives free from bullying and hate.
With the anonymity that some social media platforms allow, it is easy for people to ‘joke’ about issues that they wouldn’t dare say out loud on public transport, in front of their mums, on national TV etc.
Just last week we were involved in the removal of a very nasty group on Facebook. No need for specific details, but if I tell you the title of the group was “Keep downs sufferers away from society” I’m sure you get the idea.
We managed to get a really good momentum going on Twitter about removing the group. Other charities retweeted it and we received messages of support and encouragement from our followers.
The group was removed by Facebook only to appear again an hour later. This second group was removed but once again reappeared within a few hours. What is surprising is that it is the same admin person each time – does Facebook not take this into consideration and ban their profile too?
We don’t usually engage in this kind of work. I’ve worked on a large online community before and I know only too well how much time it takes – and that was on a platform we owned and had strict guidelines for! Last week's Twitter campaign was a bit of a knee jerk reaction to what was a nasty and uneducated attack.
However, our supporters expect us to fight to have content like this taken down and in some ways we need to show we are doing this, but when platforms like Facebook don’t seem to have any kind of protection in place (apart from the report function) it feels like a losing battle.
Search any social media platform and you’ll find all kinds of attacks on many sections of society. As a charity, should we feel responsible for the removal of this content to protect the people we support, or should we just be concentrating on educating the people we can?
My feeling is that we should be tackling hate speech on social media platforms but not through engaging with the people doing it. These people don’t care and actually enjoy the chase.
I think the best solution is to work with social media providers to tackle hate speech and to also guide our supporters in how to take appropriate action. I’d be interested to hear what other charities are doing or what their views are on this.
by Nick Torday on 10th March 2010
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You’re bang on with that Gemma, I think the salient point with trolls is that they thrill to the chase. They also know instinctively how seriously charities take them and the love the fact that their actions are hoovering up much needed time and resource.
by Kit on 11th March 2010
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There’s an interesting article on Comment is Free which touches on this too. Entitled “Facebook groups are the new lynch mobs”. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/10/facebook-groups-internet-hadley-freeman
I think that the democratisation of the internet means that you’ll always get people who use it for this kind of thing. I think in these instances, the best thing to do is respond quickly and respond well. I know it takes up time and resource, but in the long run the benefits of an effective response will be mean that time taken is worthwhile.
by Ben on 11th March 2010
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A few months back the “Re-tweet of the week” in social media circles was the “US Air Force blog assessment flowchart”. While not the answer to all problems, it is a nice framework for dealing with trolls, ragers, misguided and unhappy users.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremiah_owyang/3154057414/sizes/o/
While I’m not sure about the response to trolls being “monitor only” it does allow a blog owners (or brand owner) a way of categorising negative posts.
Sometimes the obviously inappropriate posts, such as the one mentioned above, are easier to deal with as it is very black and white (not to take away for the seriousness of the issue), but what about those posts where is it just unhelpful or inconsiderate, how much time should we dedicate to these posts?
I believe understanding the influence of a post, group or user as well as the content they have published should dictate how much time and effort is given to correction.
It is not an easy issue, it would be great to hear how others with experience in dealing with trolls and ragers have dealt with the fall out.
by Helen Barrett on 1st April 2010
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This is a really interesting subject, Gemma. Have other charities had similar problems – not just on social networking sites but anywhere online?