Western Standard - July 21, 2022


Cory on how social media anonymity is empowering cowards & censors

Mentioned
Neil Elon Musk
CORY'S RANT： The roots of the EU energy crisis. The Newsroom： Manhunt underway after two women shot to death in Chilliwack

Episode Stats


Length

3 minutes

Words per minute

217.63

Word count

794

Sentence count

61

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I discuss the loss of anonymity on social media platforms, and how that could be a good thing in the long-term. Anonymous trolls are a problem, and we need to do something about it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 I mean, discourse on social media can be pretty ugly, and it happens on every platform.
00:00:03.880 I mean, I even go to beekeeping forums where people start fighting with each other and calling their names.
00:00:08.220 You know, it's unreal.
00:00:10.080 If people are called every name in the book, they can be shamed, slandered, have their personal information posted by others.
00:00:15.120 I mean, it gets bad.
00:00:16.680 Extremists, and they happen on every end of the political spectrum.
00:00:19.100 They use social media to spread their vile messages and sometimes organize violent and destructive actions.
00:00:25.640 And the common denominator, though, with pretty much all of those extreme accounts, the bad ones, is that they're anonymous.
00:00:31.220 That is the root of a lot of problems.
00:00:34.600 Most of us play reasonably.
00:00:36.300 Sure, we get worked up now and then and say regrettable things online.
00:00:39.780 But there's a population out there comprised of anonymous trolls, and they're a tiny minority, but they can dominate and destroy discourse. 0.58
00:00:45.720 I mean, the time they got in their hands, they can obsessively post and spawn accounts faster than accounts can be banned. 0.90
00:00:51.580 They're cowards, and the only thing that's going to stop them is to take away the shroud of anonymity they hide behind.
00:00:57.720 In a relatively recent incident, and I like bringing this one up, there was a self-styled Twitter ninja out there who would vitriolically and tirelessly troll public figures online. 0.97
00:01:07.280 He bragged of the number of elected officials who'd blocked him.
00:01:10.000 He felt courageous and bold.
00:01:11.880 He felt he was an online warrior for the left.
00:01:14.740 Well, then he was exposed.
00:01:16.280 Yeah, somebody figured out who he really was, and the transformation was instant.
00:01:20.040 That was what was striking. 0.71
00:01:20.960 Suddenly, he was an apologetic pussycat. 0.73
00:01:23.640 He did an interview, and he was just all meek and apologetic.
00:01:27.380 Now, he's still online, but he's very subdued, because without the craven cloak of anonymity, he really is nothing.
00:01:33.640 He tweets under the name Neil before Zod, if he wanted to have a look at it, or check back into that sad little story.
00:01:40.260 Now, I'm not big on doxing, folks, but the tale of poor Neil did prove a valuable point.
00:01:45.300 The loss of anonymity defangs trolls.
00:01:47.740 And I understand there's a lot of people who are anonymous for very good reasons, and we don't need to take the ability to be anonymous away.
00:01:54.480 Another problem, though, is people are leaving social media platforms because they just can't handle the rage and venom anymore.
00:02:00.060 And selective culling of people with conservative views is starting to create echo chambers, and that's no good either.
00:02:06.500 Gab, unfortunately, part of the reason it hasn't really done that well is because it's just a bunch of people saying the same old stuff to each other.
00:02:12.520 What I'd like to see is a platform that verifies users, and it's understandable, again, like I said, people want to keep their anonymity.
00:02:21.100 I mean, they could have issues with their job.
00:02:22.920 They could be stalked by weirdos.
00:02:24.160 There's a lot of things when you put your name out there, but it doesn't mean your name has to be out there.
00:02:29.080 It just means there should be a way to verify that you're real.
00:02:32.380 You can only form one account, one verified account, with a different colored checkmark next to it or something like that.
00:02:39.380 And again, leave it to private business to do it.
00:02:41.480 I'm not talking about regulating it.
00:02:43.180 Verification doesn't assure that a person has to be nice.
00:02:45.860 I mean, my Twitter account's verified. 0.99
00:02:47.280 I got that precious blue checkmark, but I'm still an asshole. 0.99
00:02:50.860 I mean, it doesn't have to stop you. 0.99
00:02:52.160 It just means that you've got to be within reason.
00:02:54.860 And if you go beyond reason and you actually get dangerous or abusive or, you know, attack people, then you could potentially be charged.
00:03:02.760 We don't need more laws. 0.85
00:03:03.740 We don't need speech police.
00:03:04.700 We just need some voluntary controls and social media platforms that would eliminate the anonymity, which cloaks the small but damaging troll army out there.
00:03:12.240 Because right now, it's giving the government excuses to try and step in.
00:03:15.360 And we might see speech being limited by the state before people realize that it didn't need to get done.
00:03:20.140 Rights are really hard to regain once we lose them.
00:03:22.080 So let's hope the private market can step up on this one before the government does.
00:03:25.740 Musk was talking about doing something like that.
00:03:27.920 And as I'm saying, you know, coffee-breath conversations, no more laws.
00:03:30.480 I never said we want more laws.
00:03:31.720 Never.
00:03:32.680 Don't worry.
00:03:33.080 That's not what I'm saying.
00:03:34.400 Like Elon Musk wanted to do, private industry can fill the void.
00:03:38.100 We can do it, guys.
00:03:38.820 We can do it.