Checks and balances in the blogosphere

April 14th, 2007

Jonathan Freedland devotes a page in the Guardian to reflect on what creates, defines and structures civial society. And how those principles are missing within the blogosphere.

This month two titans of the web have launched an attempt at bringing “civility” to this ever-expanding realm, which now stretches to a staggering 71m weblogs. Jimmy Wales, creator of Wikipedia, and Tim O’Reilly, the man credited with coining the phrase Web 2.0, have proposed a code of conduct for online debate, even suggesting kite-mark style badges for sites that comply. Their move followed blogger Kathy Sierra’s disclosure that she had been the victim of a violent and threatening campaign of cyber-hate: one manipulated photo showed her head alongside a noose; elsewhere she was called a “slut” who deserved to have her throat cut.

Of course, we are not very far from the crys of free speech. But Freedland makes the point that when someone speaks anonymously, they have in fact no identity, and therefore can not be held accountable for what they are saying.

Reputation and accountability are mainstays of a civial society. The law requires that we are accountable to each other, in a number of ways.

So it makes sense that within the blogosphere there is transparency and accountability.

Freedland muses

This is something, as regular readers will know, that the Guardian has grappled with, working hard to ensure racist or offensive remarks don’t linger on the Comment is Free website. The aim is not so far from Wales and O’Reilly’s: to devise a method of moderation which doesn’t undermine the essential freedom of the medium. But how?
My immediate hunch is that the anonymity of the web is the problem. People do not tend to call each other Nazis in public meetings, or on radio phone-ins, because other people would know who they were. But if you’re called DaffyDuck you can insult whoever you like. If democracy means anything it means accountability – and that should include accountability for our own words.

And having slept on this for a few days, I do tend to agree. Perhaps we will have to carry our identities in the digital world in the same way we carry our identities in the non-digital world.

A lawless place, is a lawless place. But also the notion of regulation concerns me, as who is going to do the regulating? If within the blogosphere, principles can be agreed upon, that would be better, than an outside body/organisation wading in.

Because ultimately regulators can become gatekeepers.

Freedland sums up

At present, you can be an irascible, misogynistic anti-semite online with little or no consequence. But what if that began to affect the rest of your online life? Note how careful people are to be well-regarded on eBay, where money is at stake. Might it not be possible to have a single online identity, one that you cared about, even if it had little connection to your identity in the real world?
Neil Levine, formerly of Clara.net, wonders about a system of comment credits, earned by the ratings of other users. High credit would give you an enhanced standing online, perhaps pushing your comments to the top of any thread. If other users deemed you out of line, your status would fall.
It’s a smart idea and doubtless there will be others. But this is a nut worth cracking. Right now, the internet is too often like a stuffy meeting room on a bad night.

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