UN Sanctions on Internet Trolls: Possibly an Overreation

The UN released a report this week on cyberviolence against women. If you haven't seen it yet, you can read it here, or find a summary here.

All caught up? Good.

A few years back this same idea was put out there under the name of "cyberbullying." The core idea was the same: The big bad meanies on the internet are calling people names! The horror! And look, some of these people ended up killing themselves! Clearly the mean comments were the only reason for this, and not the myriad of other factors involved. The only solution is to censor the internet so that our precious children don't ever hear anything negative. Back then, a lot of people suggested that teaching kids how to deal with bullies is a lot more effective than trying to hide them, but as we can see, no one listened, the kids grew up without learning how to deal with bullies, and now grown adults are calling for UN sanctions against people saying "you suck" on the internet.

That last part wasn't even an exaggeration. One of the key speakers at the conference, Anita Sarkeesian, said that "online harassment doesn’t simply consist of what is legal and illegal, but also the day-to-day grind of ‘you’re a liar’ and ‘you suck’." That's what really scares me about this movement. "You're a liar" and "You suck" aren't harassment, they're just simple criticisms. If these people succeed in banning criticism, even non-constructive criticism, then free speech is dead.

Now, let's talk about the solutions this committee suggests. They split up the solution into three categories: Sensitization, Safeguards, and Sanctions. Those basically boil down to community outreach and education programs, built-in censorship mechanisms that ban people that are marked as harassing others, and legislation to turn internet trolls into criminals. Now, I have no problem with the first one: outreach/education programs, while annoying, don't actually hurt anyone. But if companies ban people for being overly critical of others, (or even worse, governments imprison people for it) then the situation will never improve. as people have to deal with mean comments less, they become even more sensitive to them, so they see "harassment" everywhere, so they ban (or - can't emphasize this enough- IMPRISON) more people, repeat until everyone is afraid to say anything for fear of offending someone.

So, what should be done? Simple- if someone is harassing you, ignore them. Add them to your spam filter, block them on social media, delete their messages, or whatever else you want to do to not be reminded of them. If you don't react, they'll get bored and move on. This advice has worked for hundreds of years for traditional bullies, and continues to work for cyberbullies. People say "don't feed the trolls" for a reason: because it works. And if you really feel like you don't want to deal with cyberbullies, turn off your computer and go talk to your friends. You know, the ones in real life. Because if you're not at your computer, (or checking your phone, or whatever else you use to get online) then cyberbullies can't do anything to you.