(Series Piece 4) Anna Kavanaugh - Syndicated Columnist - Weekly Column - Cyber Abuse: The Virtual Violent Crime

By David Simms, Senior Contributor

The Global Institute for Cyber Safety and Standards

Being Monday, this morning we proudly publish for syndication this week's installment of our featured columnist, Anna Kavanaugh, and her brilliant column, Cyber Abuse: The Virtual Violent Crime. This is Series Piece 4 and an excellent read in her column series. Anna's is a distinctive and ardent voice of expertise and wisdom in defining and describing what she rightly deems a global pandemic of virtual confusion whereby a societal breakdown of empathy and compassion confuse and pose serious threat to legal boundaries and civilised conduct. In this piece she addresses the responsibility of what she calls the architects behind the architecture of the internet. It is our honour to now present you with another perceptive and powerful installment of Anna's weekly column. Comments are open on the full article page for feedback and to encourage discussion.

Cyber Abuse: The Virtual Violent Crime. (Series Piece 4)

Written by Anna Kavanaugh, Syndicated Columnist

Published for syndication by: The Global Institute for Cyber Safety and Standards (GICSS)

“If you build it, they will come.” And so they have.

In all online interactions, more time is spent on social media sites than any other. Statistics reveal an extreme acceleration of growth in usage that is demonstrated by the 88 billion minutes logged in 2011 to an even more astonishing 121 billion just one year later. This has translated into the pursuit and achievement of enormous profits for sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, among several others, who make their money supplying interactive platforms for their online users. The architecture of cyberspace is a digital masterpiece. The networked systems intertwined in this virtual civilization comprise an information super-highway that is nothing less than a true marvel of technology. Sadly, in the complex blueprints and building of this vast and profitable online world, something fundamental has gone overlooked. And as a result, the creation of this marvel has come at a high price for a staggering number of users who have been left stranded in the darkest corners of the public domain.

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(Series Piece 3) Anna Kavanaugh - Syndicated Columnist - Weekly Column - Cyber Abuse: The Virtual Violent Crime

By David Simms, Senior Contributor

The Global Institute for Cyber Safety and Standards

Today we again proudly publish for syndication our featured columnist, Anna Kavanaugh, and her brilliant column, Cyber Abuse: The Virtual Violent Crime. This is Piece 3 and an excellent read in her column series. Anna's is a distinctive and ardent voice of expertise and wisdom in defining and describing what she rightly deems a global pandemic of virtual confusion whereby a societal breakdown of empathy and compassion confuse and pose serious threat to legal boundaries and civilised conduct. It is our honour to now present you with another perceptive and powerful installment of Anna's weekly column. Comments are open on the full article page for feedback and to encourage discussion.

Cyber Abuse: The Virtual Violent Crime. (Series Piece 3)

Written by Anna Kavanaugh, Syndicated Columnist

Published for syndication by: The Global Institute for Cyber Safety and Standards (GICSS)

Religion, righteousness, and freedom of speech are unquestionably three of the most misconstrued and misused principles throughout history. But until recently, there has never been a time when this reality rang more true. The advent of the internet has provided the perfect breeding ground for behavioral hypocrisy, the justification of heresy, and the undermining of basic human decency by virtue of self-proclaimed morality.

Cyberspace offers its users the unrestrained and anonymous opportunity to express opinions, create and disseminate false statements or damaging innuendos about others, and vent vitriolic abuse aimed at a specific individual or the world at large. Unlike any other time in history, information planted in the vast public domain of the internet can travel around the world in a matter of minutes, reaching an audience of multi-millions. And it does not end there. Information posted to various websites or preserved on social media venues self-propagates as new users happen upon it or are directed to it by various search engines indiscriminately presenting suggested search results and links to this material indexed from their web crawls. Yes, the internet is the water cooler of the modern era; the rumor mill of the age.

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Native Or Migrant

By David Simms, Senior Contributor

The Global Institute for Cyber Safety and Standards

When it comes to the global crisis we face of harassment, stalking, and the overall abuse of others, social networking sites have now surpassed all other modes as the primary means of carrying out these aggressive crimes. The statistics say that young people are twice as likely to be harassed on Facebook than any other social site in the world and that Twitter and Ask.fm are not far behind. They also say that the number one type of cyber-harassment is pornographic content followed by violent threats. What does this say about our changing world? It ought to be an indication that the internet is where most of the action is taking place socially, especially for the younger generation. If we're to combat this most effectively should we not then begin to put ourselves in their shoes?  They are considered to be internet natives, meaning their lives have always been integral with the internet, computers and technology. It is part of their founding sense of reality. Whereas the older generation are internet migrants – we did not begin there, but we adapted to the technology. This is a significant difference. Could it be then that the older generation is incapable of finding effective solutions to current internet challenges such as bullying and harassment? 

There is no doubt cyber-harassment extends to the adult world in the most vicious of ways. There is also no doubt that the stakes are much higher for adults than children. When a life is damaged online, a child has time to recover; an adult does not. The obvious answer is that the children of today must follow rules keeping their behaviours in check when at school, so they should also online. I’m not so sure it is that simple. Standards and laws are a must, but we must be mindful of the way they are implemented. They must be tailored to the natives of the internet who in some ways, though no excuse, have never known a difference.

Fun and Games, Not Really

By David Simms, Senior Contributor

Aside from social media, there is a large online population engaging in online games. Typically users have the option to communicate via instant message or other, while playing the game.  Although this has not gotten the higher profile attention that cyberbullying has, online gaming has become a cesspool of harassment that should be brought to the focus. Online gaming is a worldwide activity and another conduit for cyber harassment. While it has historically been a male dominated pastime, women now make up a large part of the gaming community. As a result, there have been increasing numbers of reports by women claiming to be sexually harassed on these sites. Competition tends to bring out aggression in people as they are engaged in striving to outperform others. This can lead to extremely insulting and offensive language aimed at other players, including both men and women. Most of the time it is limited to communications concerning the game being played at the time, but interactions can easily escalate to the point of criminal cyber attacks outside the context of the game. 

It is believed that the gaming industry attracts certain types of personalities that have a propensity toward competitive and nasty behaviours.  Because of the global networking in the gaming industry, the pool of participants with these personalities is greatly increased.  As a result of gaming wars and the exceptionally wide population of users, the aggression has spilled over into the real world where people have been threatened and physically attacked.

I'd say that brings new meaning to the words use at your own risk.

An internet of enablers.

By Abigail Clarke: Contributing Content Blogger

When people are stalked or harassed on the internet, something should be done about it immediately. I’ve grown rather weary of all the talk about what police cannot do or what social medias cannot do. There is something police can do. They can investigate these rampant crimes. Hate speech, harassment, bullying, and stalking are crimes. It is my opinion, and not lacking of common sense, that if the police don’t have the resources to deal with these, they certainly need to be given them. Victims of these crimes are not barmy and should never be made to feel they are.  I realised many years to the prior you must speak up to be heard, especially when what is being spoken is less than popular.  I don’t want to live in a society that just throws up its hands when people are routinely lashed on the internet only to say “it’s not so bad. Just live with it.”

There is also something social media companies can do. They can make it known that abuse is not acceptable in any capacity. They can work to reshape the expression, environment, and context of their sites so that hate crime cannot thrive. They can make reporting a little easier as well and support a trained staff to deal with these reports. They can make a genuine effort to listen to their users and take action on what they are saying instead of burying away complaints. These are all proactive things that could happen and would make a difference however even these don’t get to the root of the problem. They are band-aids treating symptoms and not the cause. Social media doesn’t cause cyber harassment and the police cannot cure it. What really needs to happen is for society to take a genuine look at itself.  To change the status quo of the internet requires consistent and long-term education beginning at a young age.  Society must be reconditioned to be able to function properly, as a whole, on the internet.

At present there is no doubt the internet is enabling abusive behaviours, allowing people to vent and throw their hate at others, but by the same token it also provides a platform for positive voices to be heard and for knowledge to be shared and advanced.