‘We predicted shootings to happen’ and they did
Lawrence Heights locals were braced for gunfire over social media insults
Lawrence Heights community leaders predicted real-world violence would follow a music video on YouTube with lyrics disrespecting several Toronto neighbourhoods and gangs.
“Whenever something crazy comes out on social media, we discuss it among each other and try and make an educated guess that something is going to happen,” says Dejazmatch James, a community worker known as D.J.
Within a week of the video’s posting last year, multiple shootings broke out across Toronto, including Lawrence Heights, the neighbourhood near Lawrence Avenue West and Allen Road that is no stranger to gunfire.
“It could be unrelated, we’ll never know, but what we do know is that we predicted shootings to happen and they happened,” says James, 27, a school teacher and basketball coach.
This month, city council asked for a report on “possible actions” that governments and public institutions, such as the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, can take to deal with threats of violence, intimidation and hate on social media that target marginalized communities.
Coun. Mike Colle, who represents the Lawrence Heights area, introduced the “urgent” motion because the at-risk community continues to experience high rates of crime “and social media is one of the tools being used to perpetuate these acts of violence in the community.”
“It’s really time we take a look at the responsibility of the social media platforms and the role they’re playing” which, in some cases, is allowing young men to post threats online that are holding communities hostage.
“It’s like going up to someone with a gun and threatening them, you can threaten them also on Instagram and YouTube,” Colle said.
James backed Colle’s initiative. The way things are now, social media platforms have no reason to stop spreading violent content because it creates buzz and drives up views and advertising revenue, he said.
And while the young men escalating conflicts on social media don’t tend to make money from the feuding, there are other rewards of online infamy, such as “popularity and clout,” he says.
A senior Toronto police source told the Star recently it’s common for investigators to monitor social media to decide where officers should be deployed on any given night. He would like governments to penalize platforms for not just allowing, but promoting incendiary material to spread.
“I totally agree with free speech. But when it becomes a tool towards violence then it’s not free speech,” he said. “You heard Elvis Presley was the devil, causing society to fall apart — every generation has that — but no, no, he was moving his hips … he was not inciting and bragging about raping women and killing people.”
A research report released last year called “Platform for Harm” concluded Canada could stop treating the “anarchy” on social media by simply applying existing laws and standards that deal with hate speech and threats — material that is often “highly nuanced” and never clear-cut.
“Let’s do what we always do, call the cops, press charges and let a judge decide. That’s how our system works and I don’t see why it should be any more complicated when the offence happens on social media,” said Daniel Bernhard, executive director of the watchdog ground Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, which released the report.
“If the content is found to be inciteful, or illegal by a judge, then the platform that’s publishing this, whether that’s a newspaper or broadcaster or social media company, the law has consequences for them for being party to that.”
Last fall, Toronto police issued a rare arrest warrant for a man, Rowan Atkins, for allegedly making Instagram death threats against residents of Regent Park. He allegedly counselled his 3,000 Instagram followers to “shoot everyone in Regent Park.” Atkins, wanted for a subsequent shooting, remains at large.
Bernhard scoffs about claims by social media platforms that they can’t control what people post, “as complete nonsense” and contradicted by public statements.
“They claim they automatically capture 99 per cent of offensive material and take it down before anybody sees it, and simultaneously say they have no understanding of what people post on the platforms.”
He cited a public-opinion poll last summer that found a vast majority of the Canadian public supports harsh penalties for social media platforms, and the companies’ individual executives if they’re found breaking the law.
“There’s more than just criminal law. We have civil law, we’ve got broadcast regulators, we’ve got mechanisms for dealing with this kind of stuff. We just have somehow decided that Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, should operate in this lawless zone.”