Leslie Jones, Ghostbusters actress, quit Twitter this week after being subjected to a truly upsetting slew of racist abuse, in which she was compared to an ape. Thankfully, Leslie is back on Twitter, rejoining us to live tweet Game of Thrones - but one of her abusers will not be returning to our timelines.
After his role in the disgusting bunch of messages that Leslie received via Twitter, garbage human Milo Yiannopoulos has been permanently banned from using Twitter services - and about bloody time too. A right wing writer, long time troll and self confessed 'super villain' (eye roll), this was just the latest in a long list of Yiannopoulos' online crimes, for which he has amassed several temporary suspensions. Yet another attention seeking narcissist being utterly vile. People have called for him to be banned for a long time and it's not hard to see why - but this is bringing up a lot of conversations about Twitter users in general; why aren't all Twitter trolls just being banned from the platform?
I've been interested in online bullying and hate speech for a long time and in my previous job worked with Twitter, discussing this problem; the issue of banning trolls is actually quite a difficult one. For people like Yiannopoulos, who are fairly infamous, banning them isn't quite as problematic. If he made a new account, it would garner some interest, they would no doubt hear about it pretty quickly and be able to keep on top of the situation. For your common or garden Twitter troll, hiding in dark corners or at Donald Trump rallies, this isn't so easy. Ban the troll account and it only takes a few minutes for the offending party to whip up a new one.
Solutions to this have been proposed - what about blocking the IP address? But firstly, people aren't confined to the use of one IP address in this day and age, and secondly, multiple users often share. If you blocked a users IP then perhaps the other people in their household would be affected too. Is this fair? If they've logged on from somewhere like a school or workplace then the problem is bigger - it doesn't make sense for all of these people to be prevented from using Twitter.
I don't have an answer for this issue. I'm sure that social media platforms like Twitter are continuing to look for solutions, but the fact is it's not as cut and dry as the problem might first seem - there is definitely more work to be done in ensuring user safety and making sure people aren't subjected to hate speech or bullying, but realistically there's no sense in turning around and telling Twitter this is all their fault. Sadly it's kind of inevitable that when you create something, however good your intentions, there are going to be some sad little people out there ready to subvert your good intentions and find a way to throw a spanner in the works. This doesn't mean that we should blame the platforms themselves necessarily - on a smaller scale, it's just an every day proof that there is a lot of evil lurking in our world. We all wish it wasn't... but then we watch the news.
Anyway - what can we do to combat the Twitter trolling problem? Even though it's not a foolproof system, make sure to report hate speech and abuse where you see it. Even if it can't permanently fix the situation, it's the simplest way to stand up for each other and ensure that the right people are made aware of wrongdoing. With the millions of tweets flying about, they're not going to see it if we don't tell them about it - and remember to follow up on any emails you get sent about it too, to make sure your complaint is followed up. Like many things in life, it's easier to shrug and wonder what difference we can actually make, but it's a lot more positive than sitting around doing nothing.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.