NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Fighting the Family Friendly Fiends of Internet Hate
Fighting the Family Friendly Fiends of Internet Hate
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000920.html
It's not exactly headline news that there's a lot of hate on the
Internet. But have you ever stopped to consider the different
kinds -- the different types -- of hateful sites, and the vastly different
sorts of impacts that they have on our lives?
Ironically, the types of sites that politicians love to rail against
and demand be somehow censored (technical realities be damned!)
probably have among the least real-world negative impacts.
Whether they promote international terrorism or white supremacy, war
against Iran, war against Israel, or war against the poor, these
misguided lovers of hate appeal mainly to persons already predisposed
to such foolhardy ventures, who would find their hate fix in other
ways even if those sites did not exist. And as we've seen in the case
of many would-be terrorists -- these sites tend to attract incompetent
amateurs who would usually never even get past the daydreaming stage
without elaborate law enforcement entrapment assistance.
But there are other forms of Internet hate that are less obvious, but
often far more effective at enacting their agendas.
Foreign governments demand that Google remove search results and
YouTube videos that those countries find offensive. The U.S. attempts
to impose its view of economic priorities on the entire globe via
SOPA/PIPA-based censorship of search and the outrageously
U.S.-leveraged Domain Name System (DNS). These sorts of attacks tend
to impact the availability of information, knowledge, and speech
around the world, affecting billions of people.
And there's yet another kind of Internet hate -- perhaps more
insidious than all the others I've mentioned up to now. These are the
province of bigoted, racist, hate-engorged monsters parading under
banners of religious purity, and using tactics of economic and
propagandistic blackmail in systematic attempts to destroy the lives
of innocent parties.
An example of these kinds of horrific parasites is the FFA - the
Florida Family Association (I refuse to provide them with "search
juice" -- so I'm not providing a direct link).
A visit to this group's website quickly reveals their agenda -- a vast
program of blackmailing enormous numbers of companies and
advertisers -- via threats of economic boycotts -- into pulling support
from any programs or events that FFA doesn't approve.
The most recent example of their success in this approach (loudly
trumpeted on their site) is the announcement by the Lowe's chain that
they were pulling their ads from the Discovery Channel/TLC's
"All-American Muslim" series ( http://j.mp/s5rQgP [L.A. Times] ).
All-American Muslim features programs following the lives of ordinary
people in Dearborn, Michigan, and showing that they're just ordinary
folks living ordinary lives, not the caricatures that FFA and other
anti-Muslim fetishists divisively want us to falsely believe.
This comes as no surprise to me. My corner of suburban L.A. is deeply
multicultural, and includes a large mosque and Muslim community, among
virtually every other ethnic group and nationality on the planet, from
Iranian to Australian to Nigerian. To actually know people as
individuals is to realize that our similarities vastly outweigh our
relatively trivial differences.
But it's in the interests of groups like FFA to keep such knowledge
suppressed, and to encourage the promulgation of lying stereotypes
that undermine individuals actually meeting and understanding each
other. We can also stipulate here that there are many governments
that are similarly engaged in trying to make sure that their
populations are constrained in the interests of promoting hate.
It would be a terrible mistake to assume that organizations like FFA
are not extremely Internet savvy. A look at their domain information
reveals that they originally registered back in 1997 -- quite long ago
in Internet time ( http://j.mp/vRElwC [Google+] ).
Of course it always takes two to tango. FFA and its ilk spew hate and
threats, but their partners in these abominations are the firms --
like Lowe's and many others -- who humiliate themselves (and anger the
vast majority of their customers) by slavishly kowtowing to the
demands of these disgusting hatemongers, who represent only a small
and putrid percentage of the population.
Since I oppose censorship, I would never call for such repulsive and
repugnant hate sites to be shuttered, even if it were technically
possible.
But I can call for such sites and the groups behind them to be scorned
and shunned, to be ignored by the Internet community and the
commercial targets of these groups' economic threats alike.
We cannot -- indeed should not -- have the ability to control speech
by banning sites from the Net.
Yet we do have the ability, both individually and collectively, to
control how we react to sites and the messages that they broadcast for
good or ill.
Therein resides our power, our prerogative, our right to loudly and
firmly say NO to the purveyors of hate who would malevolently cleave
the world asunder.
If we choose not to wield this power appropriately against hate, both
on and off the Internet, we'll indeed have nobody to blame but
ourselves.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://vortex.com/g+lauren
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com