Back in April I posted a thought piece on whether or not systems themselves can be the cause of harassment, hate, and toxicity. My post was inspired by a research study that found a strong correlation between systematic behaviors and human ones: when systems informed a player they were being abusive to other players within 10 minutes of the incident, the abusive behavior went down by 50%. If evidence is included, that goes down by 70%. I was and still am shocked at that statistic, and it still makes me wonder if all the hate and abuse on the internet can be decreased by 50-70%, why the hell aren’t developers focusing on this as a priority.
Today I’m writing about this again in the wake of the news that 4chan is on the verge of collapse. Brianna Wu, who has been the target of countless harassment and threat campaigns, wrote a piece called “4chan is on Death’s Door & That’s a Win for Feminism.” In it she talks about 4chan as ground zero for hundreds if not thousands of harassment campaigns, as well as home to unredeemably horrific behavior, such as one user posting pictures of a woman he just murdered and another user posting a video of him committed suicide by fire.
If we believe this argument, then it is true that the system of 4chan has enabled and bred the conditions for common behavior on the internet: targeted harassment and threat campaigns against women and people of color, trolling for the lulz, and so on. That’s not to say 4chan created hatred, racism, sexism, etc, but the argument follows that if systems encourage certain kinds of behavior, 4chan significantly increased them and created the possibility of new forms of expression of hate that would not have existed otherwise. The philosopher in me wants to ask if the people who violently troll would have found another way to hate if 4chan never existed, but I don’t know if the answer can help us. It does (did?) exist, and it did impact many people, on the giving and receiving end of harassment.
Here is my question today, where the answer is much more meaningful: when and if 4chan disappears, will the hate—at least some of it—disappear as well? Without the system that allows for the behavior, where will it go? The rules of 4chan are very interesting. You can post naked pics of people without their consent (revenge porn), you can post people’s personal information that you obtained illegally, and you can threaten to kill people. Of course if the police come knocking on 4chan’s doors, they will comply and give away your IP and other information. You can’t, interestingly enough, discuss Gamergate on the site.
At any rate, it may be a win for people like Wu who have experienced harassment stemming from 4chan, I also worry. I worry that more, worse places may pop up.
Or maybe Trump will buy 4chan.
