The Dark Side of Social Media

Today we have a critical response to When Online Shaming Spirals out of Control TED Talk , an academic blog post for #engl211.

In this TED Talk, Jon Ronson claims that Twitter was originally “a place of radical de-shaming” where the voiceless found a powerful voice. He argues that this was good, but it evolved into something terrible. A few tweets that picked up momentum could make a giant corporation realize that people are watching and they aren’t going to get away with being heartless or evil. From giving the voiceless a voice, Twitter evolved into a place where people didn’t just keep corporations from being evil, but also went after people who are perceived to have had and abused privilege.

Ronson supports his assertion with two examples. The first was pop science writer Jonah Lehrer. After being caught faking quotes, self-plagiarizing (re-using prior material without noting it was from prior work), and plagiarizing the work of others. Mr. Lehrer had a speaking engagement that would give him the opportunity to apologize for his intellectual misconduct. The foundation that he spoke before set up two screens with Twitter feeds, one that the audience could see and another that he could see while he was making his speech.

The people watching the live streamed event made comments to and about Mr. Lehrer on Twitter while he was speaking. Seeing a privileged white man make a speech about his poor decision making brought out some of the ugliness of the online world.  

With the help of a stapler and a conveniently placed down arrow key, I scrolled down in the #infoneeds feed to the day of the speech. The comments that are there now are mostly not that bad. I understand that people can delete tweets and a bunch of negative comments may have been deleted. However, the overall tone of it now is a bit of negativity with a lot of reasonable tweets and the occasional reminder to be civil.

I have to admit that although it is ugly to have a man apologizing for getting caught in a pattern of journalistic misconduct while surrounded by a Twitter feed that contains a number of negative comments, I find it hard to sympathize with him. His intellectual dishonesty benefited him and he was apologizing because he was caught. If he had to be uncomfortable while apologizing, I’m sure the $20K honorarium that he received for his speech was a comfort. I find it interesting that a Knight Foundation post the day after Mr. Lehrer’s speech says that they regret paying him a speaking fee.

While the story of Jonah Lehrer is indeed an example of online shaming, I think Ronson could have found many better examples to support his argument. That may be why he spent more time on the second example which is much stronger.

Justine Sacco, a PR professional with a small following on Twitter, made a stupid ugly tweet while traveling. One of her followers sent that tweet to a journalist with many followers and a massive Twitter storm ensued. Being a woman on the Internet is far more dangerous than being a man, and the kinds of responses she got for a moment of indiscretion were terrible. As Ronson says:

Women always have it worse than men. When a man gets shamed, it's, "I'm going to get you fired." When a woman gets shamed, it's, "I'm going to get you fired and raped and cut out your uterus."

I was on Twitter when the Justine Sacco Twitter storm hit. I remember seeing this woman’s name pop up in my feed and thinking that her tweet was terrible. I wondered if she was really that racist and ignorant or if it was somehow supposed to be a joke that just didn’t make sense to me. I remember being shocked that a PR professional could come up with such a tweet.

Having watched the Justine Sacco Twitter storm play out in real time, I can only agree with what Ronson says about mob behavior on Twitter. It starts out small with disbelief and shock that quickly turns to anger and personal threats. The more people talk about something like this, the more likely it is that someone will say something negative. Negative tweets bounce around the echo chamber and can lead to horrible threats.

This was a valuable talk on a difficult reality of social media. Ronson makes solid points and supports them well with real life examples. In the after talk he notes that it is important to stand up for people who are being shamed so that there’s a “babble of voices” instead of straight negativity. He suggests this, knowing that standing up for the target of a Twitter mob makes you a target too. He suggests this as a way to keep the Internet from turning into a place where fear silences us.

The Internet is an ugly place. If you make a mistake that goes viral, it can literally ruin your life. Both of the people Ronson used as examples were eventually able to start over, but the recovery process is long and difficult. Ronson ends his talk with a call to action. Don’t let the Internet turn into a place where we give up our voices to survive.