BRENDA POWER ON FACEBOOK

JUST imagine what it’s like to get a call from a concerned friend, entirely out the blue, to warn you your life is being threatened online? Imagine the calls and texts from colleagues, workmates and even old friends you’ve not seen for years then start to flood in, all saying the same thing: Have you heard? Are you safe? Are you worried?

Imagine how it feels to go on Facebook and see yourself pictured there, read your name and workplace, and even a chillingly accurate account of your daily movements, followed by frightening threats and vile abuse?

Since the weekend’s scandalous events at that Roscommon farmhouse, KBC Bank boss Wim Verbraeken has been the victim of such a campaign on Facebook. A page by the self-styled ‘Anti-Eviction Flying Column’ has posted clear threats to his life and wellbeing on the ‘social media’ site.

‘Scumbag should be in a coffin,’ said one. ‘I’d say his days are numbered,’ wrote another. While he might be the highest-profile victim of these vigilantes’ threats and trolling, he’s not the first. And what makes this sinister menace all the worse is that it’s being facilitated by a vastly wealthy internet giant that washes its hands of any responsibility for the fear, the threats and even the violence that its pages can incite.

Some time ago, during another controversial protest, a garda was recognised by some of the participants. They posted his photograph online, they listed his name and his workplace, and identified the restaurant where he ate lunch and the times he went there. The invitation to threaten and even attack him was spelled out in the posts.

Not being a social media user himself, he told me later, he knew nothing about this campaign until a friend phoned to alert him. Within hours his phone was hopping with calls and texts from worried workmates, and even friends he hadn’t seen in ages, all warning him this thuggish gang had him in their sights.

He said nothing to his family about the abuse and threats so as not to worry them. Colleagues investigated their source. He hadn’t been too worried himself, he told me, as ‘most of these guys are big men on Facebook, but they wouldn’t say boo to your face’, until he saw the name of one tormentor, who asked for his address: a career criminal with dissident links and firearms convictions, his threats couldn’t be taken as entirely idle… Years ago, thugs like this had to rely on an underground network of contacts and sympathisers to rally, recruit and organise an attack; today, they just open a Facebook page and start signing them up. Previously, such groups feared infiltration by security force moles; today, they hide in the plainest sight and go about their business with impunity – their presence on a social media site that’s all about ‘friends’ and ‘likes’ allows them to shelter behind an innocuous, mainstream façade.

A group calling itself the ‘Anti-Eviction Flying Column’, and referring to the ‘Black and Tans’ – deeply sinister historical spectres with a hard border looming – organised the Strokestown protest. Security men were hospitalised, a dog was killed, cars were burned out. There’s no knowing how much worse it will be next time.

BUT we know there will be a next time, because Facebook has no intention of blocking the users who organise these outrages. Asked about the posts, it initially said that the page in question was ‘not in violation of our policies’.

So inciting violent disturbances and lawlessness, glorifying the destruction of private property and attacks on people going about their jobs, bullying citizens and police officers with inflammatory taunts and labels is not in violation of Facebook’s policy?

But if you wish to notify them about nasty content, they add, they’ll very kindly look at it to see if it’s in line with their standards – not our standards, mind you, not the standards for public discourse that any civilised democracy should require, but their own standards. Essentially, then, Facebook will tell us what we have to tolerate, for the greater good of making Mark Zuckerberg richer, as no government has the cojones to lay down the law to them.

Facebook is not just a platform, it’s not just a notice board – even supermarkets and clubs are obliged to monitor their notice boards for offensive material, as they could be held liable as publishers if they don’t remove nasty material. Facebook is a lot more than a notice board – it’s a community, it’s a force, it’s a facilitator. And it is knowingly facilitating thuggery and unrest at a most volatile time in global history – and all in the name of profit.