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Critics may accuse President-elect Donald J. Trump and his supporters of dragging down public discourse in America, but civility took leave of open discussions years ago – online. Beneath digital news stories and social media posts are unmoderated, often anonymous comment streams showing in plain view the anger, condescension, misogyny, xenophobia, racism and nativism simmering within the citizenry.
In the early days of the World Wide Web, digital conversation areas were small, disparate, anonymous petri dishes, growing their own online cultures of human goodness as well as darkness. But when virtual forums expanded onto mainstream news sites more than a decade ago, incivility became the dominant force. The people formerly known as the audience used below-the-line public squares to sound off with the same coarse "straight talk" as our current president-elect.
[...] As a scholar of journalism and digital discourse, the crucial point about online comment forums and social media exchanges is that they have allowed us to be not just consumers of news and information, but generators of it ourselves. This also gives us the unbridled ability to say offensive things to wide, general audiences, often without consequences. That's helped blow the lid off society's pressure cooker of political correctness. Doing so on news websites gave disgruntled commenters (and trolls) both a wider audience and a fig leaf of legitimacy. This has contributed to a new, and more toxic, set of norms for online behavior. People don't even need professional news articles to comment on at this point. They can spew at will.
Freedom of speech is only for approved narratives. Miss America explained it best in Bananas.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @09:40AM
I got myself banned from posting comments on the Guardian's web site, ostensibly for derailing a religious discussion. Giles Fraser wrote yet another team of hogwash and I felt like taking the Mickey.
I never used to engage in discussions on general news sites, but the run up to Brexit with the glut of Alt-Stupid and outright fascist propaganda posted incessantly by semi-literate idiots needed some sort of balance.
Then Trump came along. And the place is full of Putin Bots too.
What a sad world we live in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @01:00PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @01:49PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se-majest%C3%A9 [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @07:51PM
My first slashdot account, which had really good karma, got set to post at 0 perpetually. I was very critical of Bill Gates, Microsoft, the intel itanic and IBM.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @01:38PM
So you decided to give SN the benefits of your insights and wide experience.
Lucky, lucky us.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28 2016, @01:49PM
Funny thing is, I got banned despite being a lefty Liberal fascist Islington elite limp-wristed bleeding heart traitor quisling. That was my point.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday December 28 2016, @03:40PM
He learned his lesson: now there's no user to ban.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"