The social media giants must clean up their act now
AS our future King, Prince William has to tread carefully when he opens his mouth. His father’s experience has doubtless shown him that when so senior a royal proffers a view on a controversial issue, it opens the floodgates for criticism.
But it’s hard to imagine a more suitable issue for the Duke of Cambridge to use his status to highlight than bullying. Both he and his wife have allied with anti-bullying charities and gone out of their way to support bullying victims.
This week, the Duke focused on a specific and very new aspect of bullying – and he’s absolutely right to have done so. Cyberbullying is a very recent phenomenon, quite obviously so since the rise of social media is so recent. And finally, as we reveal today, Facebook will be forced to remove illegal content within 24 hours.
Although cyberbullying is new, it is already a huge problem – and is getting worse. There are heartbreaking stories of children who live in misery because of the behaviour of online bullies. And tragically, it has also led to suicides.
But Prince William’s speech this week wasn’t just about highlighting the problem, important as that is. He had a more specific issue: that the social media giants who facilitate cyberbullying are behaving appallingly, shirking their responsibilities and refusing to take appropriate action. And it’s not just bullying that they have engendered.
THE most awful change in public life in recent years has been the injection of poison from social media. Political debate has been made so much more rancorous. Any public figure is now subject to a torrent of online hate. It is difficult to overstate the scale of the problem.
Although it starts online, it spills over into the physical world. It’s simply wrong, as some do, to dismiss this as being just the rantings of sad “keyboard warriors” who are best ignored. The murder of Jo Cox showed that online hate can have a devastating impact.
Any female public figure is subject to the most disgusting abuse – including sometimes threats of murder, rape and sexual assault. Take the Labour MP Luciana Berger. One man, John Nimmo, sent her a picture