Twitter trolls, the law and respect

Over the past week, news headlines have been dominated - and rightly so - by stories about women who've become the targets of personal threats on Twitter.

The most famous of the women concerned, historian Mary Beard, attracted online abuse after an appearance on BBC TV. Ms Beard received a bomb threat apparently because she lent her support for a boycott of Twitter, until it took adequate measures to stop bullying and harassment of women.

The head of Twitter in the UK, Tony Wang, says that these and other threats now under investigation by the Metropolitan Police were 'simply not acceptable'. He has pledged to do more to tackle abusive behaviour.

A number of recent studies have looked at the impact and possible causes of cyber-bullying, particularly where children are concerned. Whilst that represents a slightly different type of abuse, these reports are instructive when it comes to threats against women.

The reports have shown that a fundamental issue in cases of online bullying is an assumption of anonymity on behalf of those sending offensive messages.

Because many social networking sites allow people to operate under pseudonyms, users sometimes assume that there is no way of identifying the sender of a message.

Indeed we all face the danger of believing that because we use very personal devices like mobile phones to access the internet, it is automatically a secure environment.

In fact, it is still in many respects an unsafe environment; in part because of its user-friendliness. Its warm familiarity encourages us to hand over sensitive details about ourselves, often to complete strangers.

For some reason, many of us seem to think that writing something to a particular individual via a social media site is the same as whispering that information in person. Social media sites are public thoroughfares not private roads.

We also tend to forget that what goes digital usually stays digital. It is not as easy as most people think to totally delete digital records.

Echoes or traces always exist and these can usually be recovered with relatively sophisticated software. Police e-crime units rely on these programmes to recover incriminating evidence - not only from personal computers, but from the mainframes that drive internet services. Ultimately, internet anonymity is a complete fiction.

Another fiction is the idea that social media offer potential offenders a safety-in-numbers get-out-of-jail card. The law can be very dogged in the way it tracks down individuals within a seemingly nebulous crowd.

(Just ask those unsuspecting one-time criminals who were prosecuted for theft after the London riots of 2011.)

The Wild West?

The bottom line is that our fascination with handy digital devices sometimes blinds us to the fact that the digital world still represents an emerging technology - and an emerging culture.

Much has happened since Sir Tim Berners-Lee and others started playing around with linking documents on remote computers back in the 1980s. Yet, in terms of communications technologies, we are still probably only halfway through the digital revolution.

We can only begin to imagine the full impact our increasing engagement with digital media will have on social structures in, say, 10 or 20 years' time. For now, the web still has a strong element of the Wild West about it.

When a culture has at its core a high level of uncertainty, egocentric or unscrupulous individuals will take advantage of that uncertainty. In the internet's case, they also exploit the trust people place in its can-do environment.

It is not technology but human trust that drives most of what we do online. Without trust, online communities will quickly dissipate and people will take their eyes and ears elsewhere.

Supposedly anonymous online threats are simply examples of anti-social behaviour - of the most spineless variety. They should be dealt with as such, under the full weight of existing laws.

The Long Arm of the Law

Explicit threats of violence, whether they're made online or offline, should be met by stiff legal penalties. In the case of social networking, this is an area of law that is still developing.

Existing laws offer clear recourse for people who have suffered slander which causes emotional distress, or the loss of earnings or reputation. These laws are slowly being applied as rigorously to the social media world as they are to the offline world.

However, much more needs to be done to demonstrate that laws dealing with violent threats also apply to social media. Potential offenders must be clear that the seeming faceless nature of social networking will offer no protection against prosecution.

The wider problem of insults and verbal vitriol on the internet is harder to overcome, at least where the law is concerned. Where there is no slander or threat of violence, it is difficult to argue for attempts to legislate general respect or courtesy.

In the end, Twitter and its peer platforms must lift their game by offering easy-to-use mechanisms for reporting abuse. If, however, we expect them to constantly police the merely discourteous or disrespectful they may become too preoccupied to improve their services in these other, more important ways.