Facebook
leads the way against cyberbullying, but others need to follow
·MADHUMITA
MURGIAHEAD OF TECHNOLOGY
19 JUNE 2016 • 4:23b
www.telegrahp.co.uk
PMSocial networks need to practice
proactive compassion CREDIT: ALAMY
This week Prince
William joined the ranks of the tech-savvy royals when he attended Founders
Forum, an invitation-only event for tech founders held at an 18th century
mansion in the depths of Hertfordshire.
Surrounded by the heads of Google, Facebook and Twitter, the
Duke of Cambridge didn’t choose to advocate for entrepreneurship or celebrate
Britain’s role in the digital revolution – instead he picked a surprisingly
buzzword-free topic usually avoided at self-congratulatory events like these:
cyberbullying.
The
Duke was speaking to an audience including influential tech entrepreneurs CREDIT: PA
The Prince said he had become
“alarmed” by the rise of cyber trolls, particularly since becoming a
parent, and called on social media giants to tackle bullying more actively. As
a parent, he said, he was appalled at the news of teenage suicides and eating
disorders borne out of online cruelty.
If there’s any indication of how mainstream the issue has
become, it’s this. Last year, BullyingUK saw calls relating to cyberbullying
increase by 77pc over a 12-month period. In an online survey, BullyingUK also
found that 43.5pc of respondents aged between 11 and 16 had been bullied via
social networks.
And while children are most vulnerable, adults and
celebrities are equally exposed. Earlier this month, Uber’s UK head Jo Bertram
said she didn’t use Twitter anymore because of the torrential abuse she received
from black cab drivers who have compared her to Jimmy Saville, and also said
they wished she would get run over by a car.
Monica Lewinsky, in her electric Ted Talk about online
shame, said that after her affair with President Bill Clinton became public,
she almost lost her life to the “mobs of virtual stone-throwers” who publicly
humiliated her for more than a decade.
The thing about online bullies is that they are faceless: on
the web, gutless tormentors don’t have to face up to their victims as they
would in a school playground or in an office. Instead, they hide behind
anonymous usernames and disappearing messages, a virtual mob loath to get their
hands dirty.
It’s time we brought some compassion to the internet, but
whose responsibility is it?
The average person has five social media accounts, and we
spend almost 30pc of our time online using these networks – about 1 hour and 40
minutes every day. Facebook is by far the largest online community, with 82pc
of the world’s population, excluding China, having a Facebook account and 40pc
using it regularly. Twitter has roughly 350m people signed up.
Their immense scale also means
social networks have got a finger on the pulse of humanity – the perfect
vantage point from which to help.
My opinion, like Prince William’s, is that no one is better
placed to encourage compassion than social media companies – after all, their
networks have facilitated this new social phenomenon through their very
existence. And it's not good enough just to solve a crime after it's
committed - tech companies must start to police their vast virtual domains
more proactively.
Back in 2013, a study suggested Facebook was the worst
network for teenage cyberbullying; 87pc of teens who reported cyber abuse said
they were targeted on Facebook, while 20pc blamed Twitter.
Despite its smaller size, Twitter has a particularly dark
side, with harassment and trolling driving away even celebrity users, including
Stephen Fry and the Great British Bakeoff’s Sue Perkins. Some believe it's the central reason that
the platform is bleeding users.
Its former chief executive, Dick Costolo, made a very frank
apology on an internal forum last year, admitting that the microblogging
service “suck(s) at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we've
sucked at it for years”.
The bare minimum responsibility would be to provide a
channel for users to report direct abuse, threats and bullying. Last year,
Twitter addressed this by allowing third parties to flag abuse rather than
waiting for victims to do it themselves. It also broadened the criteria by
which it assessed threats.
For example, where previously it would have required a troll
to explicitly state details of a threat – such as wanting to commit sexual
violence at the person’s home – before it could act on it, it now acts on more
generalised threats such as those of physical violence.
Last week, it also made it easier for users to block trolls
effectively.
Starting today,
we're making Block easier to help you control your Twitter experience. https://about.twitter.com/safety/three-tools-to-control-your-twitter-experience …pic.twitter.com/gCzkTwoglP
Facebook has been particularly driven in an effort to foster
compassion within its vast network - one step forward from resolving
complaints.
For example, take the "reporting" tool on
Facebook that allows you to report a photo or comment that you want taken down.
To make people engage directly with each other and resolve conflict,Facebook’s compassion
team created take-down requests to communicate why the user
wanted a post removed.
Human articulations such as "It’s embarrassing”
increased the requests hugely. And of those requests, 85pc of the time, the
person who posted the photo took it down or sent a reply, forcing bullies to
talk directly to their victims.
Changing
'embarrassing' to 'it's embarassing' made engagement rise by 1.5 times
Reporting abuse is the bedrock of online safety, but large
social networks have to move to a more proactive form of compassion.
The most cutting-edge technologies such as machine learning
are being used to make these products more fun, engaging and useful, but they
could equally be applied to making these spaces more inclusive and empathetic.
For instance, hateful speech should be filtered by
abuse-spotting algorithms and removed before it has the chance to inflict pain.
Behavioural algorithms might be able to learn from profiles who is more likely
to be a troll or a harasser and flag them up to community officers.
This week, Facebook took a big step in this direction by
rolling out its Suicide Prevention tools globally. The Compassion team worked
with 50 partners, including the Samaritans in Britain, to provide mental health
resources for those at risk of suicide or self-harm.
Facebook's
suicide prevention tools
The tool allows third parties to report posts that seemed
like distress signals. If Facebook’s large community monitoring team deems
the reported post a cry for help, the person’s normal Facebook experience will
be paused when they next log in.
Instead, they will get a message saying one of their friends
thought they might be going through a tough time, and an offer to help.
Resources shared include contact details of local helplines, self-help tips and
reminders of friends who could help. The person who reported the post receives
a set of support resources as well.
For the most part, social networks, like the internet
itself, have been a unifying force, connecting everyone from angst-ridden teens
to lonely grandparents around the world. Through them, we can engage with
strangers, broadcast repressed ideas and ideologies, and record our lives for
posterity.
But their immense scale also means social networks
have got a finger on the pulse of humanity – the perfect vantage
point from which to help. It's time they took their lead from the world's
largest online community, and stepped up.
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