Mobs, violence, coups: The power of online harassment
Gone are the days when cyber abuse largely entailed mean comments posted on the internet – now it is a driver behind suicides, terrorist attacks, violent protests and even attempted coups. Marine´ Lourens reports.
WHEN pro-Trump extremists stormed the Capitol in Washington DC last week, it was a sobering example of how the community dynamics of hatemobs and online harassment campaigns can escalate into a tangible and life-threatening event.
Gone are the days when cyber attacks largely entailed unpleasant posts by technology-obsessed teens. Online harassment can be the driver behind suicides, terrorism, violent protests and even attempted coups.
‘‘We’ve seen recent rapid escalations in how organised the delivery of online harassment can be, particularly connected to white-supremacist groups, antitrans bigots, and major political campaigns,’’ says Dr Kevin Veale, from Massey University’s School of Humanities, Media and Creative Communication.
Veale has recently released a book, Gaming the Dynamics of Online Harassment, which explores how online abuse works and the deadly impact it can have, while increasing profits for social media companies that enable it.
Veale draws parallels between Alternate Reality
Games (ARGs) and the workings of online harassment campaigns. An ARG is a game that uses the real world as a ‘‘gameboard’’ and unifies a community to unravel a mystery or solve a puzzle. It cannot be done alone and depends on community problemsolving. This is applicable to the world of online harassment, when somebody identifies an individual as a target and drums up a community to assist in achieving that goal, says Veale.
‘‘If someone decides they want to destroy me by painting me as being a terrorist, they can get an online community together to write blog posts and medium posts calling me a terrorist. If there are hundreds of posts being written in hundreds of places all over the world, guess what will pop up when you Google my name? Content labelling me a terrorist,’’ he explains.
‘‘Then they contact my employer and ask: ‘How can you justify employing a terrorist?’ My employer does their own research and finds all this content online that looks very real. And I am fired.’’
Veale has encountered myriad examples of people
having their lives ruined through targeted online campaigns, including an acquaintance who was framed as being part of the 2015 Paris terrorist attack, and a close friend who was driven to suicide by online tormenters.
It is a phenomenon that is not limited to politicians, celebrities and high-profile names, but something that affects everyday people.
New Zealand activist Byron Clark became a target of rightwing online groups after he reported threats of violence in Facebook posts to the platform and police. Posts about him, photos, screenshots of his social media profiles and threatening comments were soon shared online.
On Clark’s own YouTube channel, someone posted his home address in the comments, spoke about watching him riding by on his bicycle, and said it would be ‘‘a shame if he knew a Nazi was living nearby’’. Clark deleted the comments, but soon received printouts of the comments in his letterbox.
He continued to receive threats via social media, and his address was shared on far-right online message boards and groups for people who supported the March 15 terrorist.
‘‘With threats like that you always have to treat them like they are credible. But I think the actual goal was to intimidate me, rather than someone planning to follow through with any of the threats,’’ Clark says.
He says he refused to allow the threats to silence him and prevent him from speaking about the existence and danger of farright supporters in New Zealand.
‘‘Some people’s bark is definitely more than their bite, but I do think these types of threats and harassment need to be taken seriously. A lot of it is written by people who wouldn’t carry out something themselves, but they hope to encourage somebody who has less control and will be willing to carry out some sort of violent act.’’
Christchurch nurse and activist Josie Butler was on the receiving end of a barrage of rape and death threats from Morocco after leading a protest opposing a bulk shipment of fertiliser from the disputed territory of Western Sahara. The threats were via different social media platforms from Moroccan or pro-Morocco individuals with some including images of the Moroccan military police.
While the online threats never escalated to physical threats, they were concerning enough for Butler’s mum to increase security at her home, which was listed as Josie’s address on the electoral roll. ‘‘It was pretty scary. There was no way for me to know if they were real threats or just people trying to intimidate me,’’ says Butler.
She reported the threats to police and Netsafe, but was told there was not much that could be done, and she should ensure her social media settings were as private as possible. ‘‘Which is a challenge when you are an activist and use social media as a platform to publicly share information.’’
Trying to create an impenetrable distinction between online and offline is no longer realistic, says Veale.
‘‘We can’t be told to ‘not go online’ any more. It is part of the world – using online banking, looking for information. There are employers who would not employ someone if they can’t show them their Facebook profile.’’
Taking online harm into the real world is the very goal of online harassment – and there are strategies to do so.
Veale refers to the use of ‘‘swatting’’, which entails generating an emergency law enforcement response under false pretences. Swatters call an emergency line and report a violent situation such as a shooting or a hostage situation at the victim’s location in the hope that this escalates into law enforcement harming the victim because of a perceived threat.
In 2019, California man Tyler Barriss was sentenced to 20 years in jail after making a hoax call about a hostage situation in Kansas that ended with police fatally shooting 28-year-old Andrew Finch. The motive? Losing in an online video game.
‘‘Swatting is less common in the UK and places like New Zealand, because we have less militarised police. But it is still
. . . common, especially in America,’’ says Veale.
The violent siege at the Capitol led to now-impeached US President Donald Trump being permanently banned from Twitter, and indefinitely suspended from Facebook and Instagram. In the aftermath Twitter also suspended about 70,000 accounts linked to the farright movement QAnon.
But the social media giants’ clampdown on far-right content was anything but routine.
While online harassment is manifesting into real-world chaos, social media giants profit from the misery and mayhem.
Social media platforms use ‘‘engagement’’ to attract advertisers – the more engagement the site has, the more valuable the advertising space. ‘‘So if someone is getting dogpiled by pictures of the Holocaust or
GIFs to trigger their epilepsy, they call that engagement instead of harassment because it looks really good.’’
Local laws in Germany and France prevent Twitter from allowing pro-Nazi content on the platform. ‘‘Switching your account location to one of these countries means a huge amount of white supremacist content vanishes from your timeline,’’ says Veale.
‘‘That means Twitter has built a filter that they could have applied to the entire world, but they’ve only applied it to the minimum number of [countries] they are required to by law. There are many questions that need to be asked.’’
We are not resigned to a world driven by online propaganda and campaigning. There are things that can be done.
According to Veale, the focus should be on collective action. The Christchurch Call to Action summit compelled social media giants to review how their business models and algorithms impact online extremism and terrorism.
In an article titled ‘‘Beware of Geeks Bearing Gifts’’, Peter A. Thompson of Victoria University’s media studies programme takes a closer look at how social media companies aim to avoid regulation.
‘‘These companies don’t want to have to make different rules for different countries, because it costs them money,’’ Veale says.
‘‘So if we can push our governments to pressure the multinationals on certain aspects, they will go to greater lengths trying to persuade us they are good and that they don’t need this kind of local-level regulation.
‘‘They will be more likely to put in filters at a global level to avoid having to do individualised filters at a national level. It shows that local-level political pressure can actually work.’’
‘While online harassment is manifesting into real-world chaos, social media giants profit from the misery and mayhem.’