SOMETIMES Twitter is a hurtful social media platform where keyboard warriors and internet trolls indiscriminately vent their spleen on victims.
Under the thin veil of free speech, they believe there’s some kind of universal right to malign, insult and perhaps slander others.
Social media has given a platform to some with sinister motives, like stalkers, fantasists and the emotionally unhinged. These people are lurkers, creepy and disquieting.
Of course, Twitter and other social media outlets are used by most for social reasons, news sharing, breaking stories or for promotion. But given their reach, these platforms are actually publishers of comment and therefore need proper regulation. Twitter is not Speakers’ Corner.
However, the worst internet warriors usually come under three main categories: the lunatic fringes of the left, the rancid far right and the perpetual whinging whiners – Alf Garnett types who are at war with a changing world.
The latter are the most tolerable as they embody those cranks whose own mothers would struggle to love. These serial complainers are really not campaigners and their social media interventions are not normally political crusades.
On most occasions they are as harmless as dotty evangelical street preachers or those perma-tanned snake oil salesmen trying to flog timeshares.
Those who deliberately use social media in a negative way and who are driven by political motivations are a different kettle of fish.
Increasingly they have become a real danger to democracy by spreading false narratives, pushing pernicious lies and targeting vulnerable groups and/or individuals through noxious and demeaning online discourse.
They feed a herd mentality, fuelling first fear and then fire. Once ignited they let loose the dogs of war from the keyboards to the streets. It’s become a well-trodden and occasionally tragic path.
The murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox was a stark reminder of how online interaction with international far right and supremacist groups can work out on the ground thousands of miles away from the genesis of poisonous ideologies.
Similarly, the senseless murder of the Tory MP David Amess by a militant Islamist shows how the dark span of the world wide web can net in many followers/supporters for terrorist groups – even if the protagonists never meet. (Thankfully both murderers are safely behind bars).
When the fabulist Boris Johnson made unfounded allegations in Parliament about Keir Starmer’s time as Director of Public Prosecutions in relation to Jimmy Savile, the comments went viral and Starmer needed police protection from would-be attackers going ‘to and fro’ Westminster.
There are real and sometimes predictable consequences from the use of careless language.
Recently, Owen Jones, a left wing activist and columnist in The Guardian, posted on twitter a video of himself saying “If you see Keir Starmer out and about, call him what he is – a conman and a liar – and film it”. Calling on the public to harass and get up close with politicians is unwise at best, even if Starmer, unlike John Prescott, is unlikely to punch anyone who gets too close.
Of course, Northern Ireland has its share of internet drama queens but strip away their war-weary rhetoric and you are left with insecure, cartoonish attention seekers.
Free speech can come at a deadly cost. First rule: reel in it before tapping it out.
