The professional bullies of talkback radio and the tabloid terrorsphere are bellyaching about trolls on Twitter. This is like Bernie Madoff condemning shoplifting or BP ticking off householders for pouring toxic cleaners down the sink.

Yes, it’s pot-kettle-black territory folks. Here are media outlets that specialise in mock outrage and building audiences through calculated invective, abuse and hysterical name-calling suddenly turning all new age and sensitive. What’s more these people make a substantial living out of the professional trollery, shouting down their critics as enemies of “freedom”.

Yet, this same group of ruddy-faced, vein-popping demagogues and mouth-breathing scribblers now want the government to regulate to shut down the anonymous trolls who use Twitter as a tool of character assassination and an avenue to spread lies, misinformation and propaganda. Well blow me down.

Wasn’t this the same crowd who a short time ago were warning that that the sky was about fall in because of the Racial Discrimination Act finding against conservative polemicist Andrew Bolt? Again one suspects that the freedom banner only flies with these people when they are defending the rights of the powerful to kick the powerless, underprivileged and voiceless. When the boot is on the other foot, oh well…

When I posted this point on Twitter, the cartoonist Jon Kudelka replied that it worked the other way as well. In other words, you couldn’t argue for tighter regulation of the mainstream media while accusing the MSM critics of Twitter of being overly sensitive and censorious.

The simple answer to this is that no-one is defending the use of social media for anonymous and hateful attacks on anyone – public figures or otherwise. However, higher standards of conduct apply to journalists and commentators in the mainstream media who enjoy a power, privilege and reach not available to others.

How to balance freedom of digital expression with the need to protect people against stalking, bullying, hate speech and other forms of internet trollery is the subject of a recent thoughtful white paper by UK legal academic Jacob Rowbottom of Oxford University’s faculty of law.

Rowbottom points to a few cases in the UK where authorities have delivered disproportionate penalties to those found guilty of social media-related offences (including one man jailed for four years for jokingly creating a Facebook page based on the London riots). The answer, he says, to over-regulation is for authorities to distinguish between “high-level” and “low-level” digital communication.

The high-level type he defines as professionally produced, aimed at a wide audience, well resourced and researched in advance. The low-level communication, by contrast, he classifies as amateur content that is spontaneous, inexpensive to produce and is akin to everyday conversation.

“This does not point to a cyber-libertarian conclusion that amateur expression online should have no constraints,” Rowbottom adds. “Some very real harms can flow from digital communications, affecting people in a way that offline conversations cannot. If a type a speech is so harmful that it requires a legal response, the laws should be framed in a way that protects the freedom to converse and any controls should be proportionate.

“The casual amateur speaker with limited resources or legal advice should be held to lower standards than professional journalists or even those involved in a protest, who have greater guidance on the ground from the police. This does not mean complete freedom from any responsibility, but that any regulations should be suited to the digital context, and the procedure and sanctions should be proportionate not only to the harm, but to the level of responsibility expected from the speaker.”

This approach seems to me a much more sensible and pragmatic framework than either shrieking calls for the government to ‘crack down’ on Twitter trolls or the high-minded US-style hand-on-heart calls for the preservation of liberty and our sacred freedoms.

Perhaps, the federal government’s response to the Convergence Review, when it finally arrives, will cover this need for a distinction in the law.

In the meantime, if those freedoms really are so sacred, why are conservatives so reluctant to support a constitutional right to freedom of speech? Or is their chest-beating really about protecting the rights of the powerful to slur the powerless and use their deep pockets to silence their opponents through the courts?

See also
1. Roast News Update
2. Sometimes, It Takes a Troll to Know One – Richard Ackland, SMH
3. The Staggering Hypocrisy of the Supertrollers – Jonathan Green, The Drum


6 Comments

Pappinbarra Fox · September 12, 2012 at 2:49 AM

Oh yes, it is about the protection of the rich and powerful right to freely express their discordant views on what the world should think and believe in (which by happenchance coincides with their own world view) but not about the protection of the right to free speech of those who disagree with them. Well said Sir!

Anonymous · September 12, 2012 at 3:52 AM

FTR, the man who spearheaded this anti-troll campaign (which the media has gripped with both sweaty hands) is embroiled in a thick smog of hypocrisy.

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/farah-said-pm-should-get-a-noose-20120912-25rpl.html

Apologies for linking MSM to your otherwise squeaky-clean website

Anonymous · September 12, 2012 at 9:24 AM

It also appears that the subject of that tweet himself was regarded as a bully at school which makes me wonder if the tweet was not a form of payback, distasteful as it is. It appears that the bullies of this world (Bolt, Jones, Hadley etc.) want the continued right to bully and lie but object when they are subject to such behaviour. Far better the world where that behaviour is regarded as not acceptable at all. Then we wouldn't be subjected to such hypocrisy.

wilful · September 13, 2012 at 1:54 AM

A rugby blog I read just posted a short conversation they had with Malcolm Turnbull about this matter, and had a few thoughts particularly as it relates to who's the bully when it comes to famous people.

Typically thoughtful, since it's by a rugby writer 😉

http://www.greenandgoldrugby.com/trolls-malcolm-turnbull-and-me/

Number One Bag · September 13, 2012 at 7:26 AM

Has anyone seen that picture doing the rounds of facebook (TM) where someone did over the front page of the Tele of 12 September pointing to the use of this anti-troll campaign as a distraction from the O'Farrell Government's cuts to edumacation? It's quite good.

Martin Spalding · September 21, 2012 at 8:16 AM

Thanks for a well-written and (as usual) well-sourced article. If you want credibility in this debate you have to be consistent, and on that score this is an epic fail by the MSM. Personally I have no problem with judicious moves to curb the most vile bullying-via-media … but what's good for social media should also be good for blogs, columns, radio segments and the followers who respond.

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