Social media platforms have come under increasing fire for failing to prevent the exploitation of their tools to spread online toxicity, from hate speech to terrorism incitement. Policymakers, pundits and the public in turn proclaim that social media is the reason for growing online hatred and the spread of digital toxicity. Citing everything from their emphasis on viral content to their gamification of sharing, social media has become the modern bogeyman. Yet a closer look back at the early days of the Web reminds us that online toxicity is as old as the Web itself but that our return to communities may help.
Over the past decade our social platforms have somehow devolved from the savoir of democracy to the destroyer of society. Platforms like Twitter and Facebook were lauded for their roles in the Arab Spring just under a decade ago, credited by many with helping tilt the balance against repressive dictatorships. Somehow in the years since they have been redefined as conveyors of hate rather than of freedom.
Have social platforms really unleashed a wave of hatred upon the world that never existed before?
Looking to the early days of the “Web” and its predecessors, there were always communities of hate and intolerance. In the Era of Usenet, there was a wealth of toxicity and falsehoods to be found. Even falsified imagery and video proliferated.
The difference is that in the early days of the Web and its predecessors, only a very small portion of the population was online and exposed to such content. Those that were online tended to fall into narrow demographic, cultural and lived experience backgrounds.
Technological limitations of the day meant most communities were relatively small and insular, focused on specific narrow interests or behaviors and having relatively small membership. The idea of hundreds of millions of people pouring forth their real-time thoughts into a torrential fire hose of social chaos was not yet even imaginable.
The small communities and similar demographics and cultural backgrounds of early Web users meant misogyny, racism, ethnocentrism and every other imaginable toxicity could find homes in like-minded communities that were largely invisible to the general public. The small size of most communities meant such content was more insular, shared among like-minded individuals, rather than broadcast to the outside world.
As the Web has grown over the years into a far more diverse community, these toxic issues have become more visible.
It is notable that Twitter has become in many ways the public face of bullying, hate speech, racism, sexism and other forms of toxic speech more than its peers. It is not that Twitter necessarily has more hatred than other platforms, but rather that other platforms' non-public nature and community structure means such hatred is compartmentalized among like-minded individuals, much as it was in the early Web.
In contrast, Twitter is a free-for-all in which every post is visible to the entire planet, meaning hateful speech can be directly published at and consumed by society’s most vulnerable. In contrast, platforms like Facebook envelope users in the protective bubble of community, making it harder for harmful actors to reach them.
Putting this all together, we see that online toxicity is not something new, borne out of social platforms that suddenly gave us all a voice. It has been with us since the dawn of the digital world.
The difference is that social media platforms have encouraged broadcast designs in which hateful individuals are able to reach beyond their own communities to target their horrific speech directly against those they dislike. In turn, those broadcast mediums offer few tools to protect users against such attacks beyond blocking or reporting individual users one at a time in a perpetual game of whack-a-mole.
In the end, returning the Web to the small communities from whence it came will not stop online toxicity, but may help contain it and restore the barriers that previously prevented its free flow. Most importantly, the shift away from broadcast mediums will deprive those who wish to harm others of the megaphone which they have so effectively wielded and offer a bit more protection to society’s most vulnerable.
