Politics is becoming a weapon of hate in the digital wild west
Considered views must be allowed to be heard above the shrill, the ugly and the extreme
INCIVILITY and barbarism are like rust: they never sleep. So it was quite right that the Prime Minister should mark the 100th anniversary yesterday of the 1918 Representation of the People Act with a series of measures to address what she called the “coarsening” of public debate and the “tone of bitterness and aggression” by which it has been infected.
None should confuse the healthy badinage, satire and verbal knockabout, which are features of any vibrant democracy, with the appalling threats, abuse and intimidation that are becoming all too prevalent in political life. It is sad to reflect that the murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox in June 2016 was only the most extreme instance to date of a spectrum of vicious behaviour, a pattern of verbal and sometimes physical menace that has undoubtedly damaged democratic exchange in this country.
A century since women over 30 gained the right to vote, many female MPs routinely face online threats of rape, violence or murder. Some, such as Stella Creasy and Jess Phillips, have spoken bravely of their experiences and reported the worst offenders to the police. Those who suggest that their complaints reflect oversensitivity should ask themselves how they would react to receiving — as Phillips did in June 2016 — more than 600 threats of rape on Twitter in a single night.
As so often, the rules by which society is ordered lag behind technological innovation. The sheer pace of the social media revolution cannot be overstated: it is a mere 14 years since Facebook was launched, 12 since Twitter was launched and eight since Instagram was founded. We are still in the foothills of this great transformation.
Initially the political class believed that existing legislation was sufficient: in July 2014, for example, the House of Lords Communications Committee concluded that the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 and the Malicious Communications Act 1988 covered online intimidation.
In April last year, however, the Home Affairs Select Committee declared that “the Government should review the entire legislative framework governing online hate speech, harassment and extremism”. In December the Committee on Standards in Public Life, chaired by Lord Bew, delivered its report on the new wave of intimidation — and it is this document that will be the basis for the Government’s reforms.
At the heart of the committee’s recommendations is a call for the tech giants to assume a much greater degree of responsibility for the content on their platforms. It is reasonable of these companies to object that the sheer volume of traffic — one billion people use Facebook daily — makes detailed “pre-moderation” of material before it is posted all but impossible. But, as the committee pointed out, “automated techniques”, as well as human editing, will make the identification of the worst material increasingly easy. What matters is the speed with which these companies take down intimidating content and the sanctions they deploy against those who post it in the first place.
The days of the web as the Wild West — the scene of a furious and unregulated gold rush — are over. These technologies are now embedded into our lives at every level and should no more be exempt from sensible regulation than, say, cars or firearms.
The Bew report found “no evidence that the current criminal law is insufficient”. In contrast, the Government has asked the Law Commission to revisit this question and to examine in detail the capacity of existing criminal legislation to deal with the new species of threat. In this instance ministers are right to err on the side of caution.
They are also right to approach the problem with visible urgency and to connect explicitly the centenary of women’s enfranchisement with the challenges facing democratic life in the 21st century. It is no exaggeration to say that lives are at stake as well as the broader wellbeing of the polity.
But the matter should not rest there, with the legislators and the regulators. No law or code of practice can, in and of itself, enforce civility. Outlawing (and punishing) the most heinous abusers of online anonymity is only the start of the matter. No Ministry of Politeness could conceivably achieve the change that the PM demanded yesterday.
The greatest challenge of our polarised, fractious era is how to defend and enrich what the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas calls “the public sphere” — the area of social life where citizens can congregate to discuss freely the problems of the time and decide upon appropriate political action. The existence of this space, in institutions, civil society and traditional media, was long taken for granted. But now it has been trampled upon, desecrated by manipulative populism, digital tribalism and the weaponised power of online platforms, where the shrill and the extreme shove aside considered and moderate voices.
Repairing this ground is predominantly a cultural task. Legislation and regulation can provide a framework, but no more. The battle to prevent healthy pluralism descending into ugly relativism will be much more nuanced, protracted and beset with pitfalls.
At its heart must be a remorseless emphasis at every level of education upon digital literacy and its connection to the basic rights and responsibilities of citizenship. It is excellent that young pupils are taught not to bully one another online or offline. But, as they grow up, they should also be shown that abuse in the public space is just as harmful as in private life: that screaming threats at those who represent them scars the common good as well as the individuals they target.
The scale of this task is as immense as it is pressing. It requires the highest standards of leadership and civic response. The question is: how will our descendants judge our response to the challenge a hundred years hence?
Web technologies should no more be exempt from regulation than, say, cars or firearms
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