Anonymity is a scary aspect of the internet that a lot of people use for negative reasons. I believe that allowing users of social networking websites
to remain anonymous is only going to perpetuate racist acts and bullying in
years, and generations, to come. I think
that allowing someone to remain anonymous gives them reassurance that whatever
they say or do over social media will not be reprimanded in any way, and
therefore gives them the confidence to post inflammatory content. With that being said, the only way to put an
end to this behaviour, even in part, is to oust bullies and racists to the
general public, therefore taking away their confidence that they will never be
exposed. However, I think that there are
certain acceptable ways of exposing the people behind misbehaviour on social
media, especially seeing as many of the perpetrators seem to be youth. Exposing people for their racist and
inflammatory remarks is a beneficial way of combating the misuse of social
media, but only if they are exposed for reasons of education and warnings to
others as opposed to simply for entertainment purposes.
One example of taking away people’s anonymity is in the case
of the website Jezebel, as they revealed several teenagers who had posted
racist tweets about Barack Obama. Their
way of exposing the teens was to contact the principals of the school (or other
officials, depending on the case in question), to ask if the racist tweets went
against the code of conduct of the schools. I believe that the idea behind
doing this was that it would lead to punishment for the teens. Most of the people contacted were pretty tight
lipped about the offences, likely because they didn't want to reveal
information about people who were still minors.
I believe that this was a good way to combat the problem of
anonymity allowing people to post inappropriate content on social media because
it was constructive. The idea (in my
opinion) was to expose them in order to hopefully obtain some sort of education
on the matter of racism as opposed to just exposing them for the sake of having
the whole world know who they are. I
feel as though even though racism is a horrible concept that people have to
deal with on a daily basis, it provides people with a sort of entertainment
value. Bad news tends to make the
headlines, such as actors and actresses being admitted to rehab, murders, and
other violent crimes. For some reason, the public seems to enjoy reading about these instances, perhaps because we feel comfort that it is happening
to someone else and not us. I think that
it is the same concept with the ousting of people who have posted racist
content online. The outside world would
be entertained by the exposure of these people, and I think that
ousting people for this reason is not constructive at all for society. The constructive way to go about exposing these people would be to provide education and information to the public about the effects that racism can have.
The website Slate believes the opposite; that racist minors
are probably not all that racist, but rather are impulsive and didn't think
their posts through. They believe that
ousting these people will in fact make the kids angrier and possibly more likely
to continue acting out. They don’t believe
that these teens will have attitude changes because people found out that they
made a racist tweet. Moreover, they
believe that these websites should not have used minors’ personal information
to track them down. It is an interesting
take on the idea, since dealing with the privacy of minors is such a big issue
in today’s society.
Another interesting example of racist posts about Barack
Obama on social media involved someone’s persistent identity on Facebook, and
led to her losing her job at a Cold Stone Creamery. The Fox40 website posted an article about a
woman who was being investigated by the secret service about her racist Facebook
post. The interesting thing is that she
was perfectly willing to come forward and talk about it to the media, saying that
she didn't think that what she said was wrong.
Although she said that maybe Obama would get assassinated, she never said
that anyone should do it, or that she was going to do it. In her mind, that made the comment okay. Fox40 posted another article the next day
about the fact that this woman had lost her job over the post. The article said that her comments did not
reflect the views of the company, which I am assuming is the reason that they
let her go.
I also think that this is a constructive way of dealing with
the issue, because if people start to realize that they may lose their job for
things that they post on social media, they may think twice about doing so. Aside from losing a job, individuals could lose relationships, respect, and future job prospects, all of which could greatly impact a person's life. Even though this case did get exposed to the
media, I think that it may serve as a warning to others who have contemplated,
or are contemplating, posting a racist or otherwise inappropriate remark on the
internet.
In combining these two cases, we can see that one can either
be anonymous or not to be revealed to the public. We can also see that the results of these
exposures can be completely different; from the loss of a job to discipline
through the school boards. Either way, I
think that the intentions of the people who were doing the exposing were good;
to show people that it is not okay to use anonymity and social platforms to
express racist views. I think that
what they are trying to show people is that individuals around the world are
affected by these types of remarks.
Especially when using platforms like the World Wide Web, these views can
become widespread and people can band together using anonymity to make others
feel inferior and not worthy of respect.
What the world seems to be working towards now is fostering an
environment of respect among individuals of different races because in the end, we are all humans. So, if we do not do
something about the fact that people are using anonymity in order to perpetuate
negative views about each other, than the problem of racism in the world will
likely never go away. The amount of influence
that the internet has on us at this point in history is striking, and can be used
for either pro-social or anti-social reasons.
Anonymity seems to be convincing people that the anti-social reasons are
what they should act upon, when in reality we could be using our persistent identities
to promote pro-social behaviour instead. In sum, collective action is necessary in order to combat the use of anonymity to promote racism and other negativity worldwide.
