Social Media Misconducts
‘Misconduct by some of the users of social media has created immense societal issues and Social Media platform providers have been under tremendous pressure to strengthen necessary security and to increase public awareness on the mechanisms to combat such acts of misuse.’
Social media, the revolution of the 21st century, a turning point in the history of communication and human interactions, is a collection of websites or applications designed to connect like-minded people and allow them to interact with each other. At the beginning individuals were using social media just to stay in touch with friends and family or with different communities but now this is a pioneer in business, education, health and various other fields. This is daily growing both to the better and the worst sides and has become unstoppable due to the expansion of mobile applications and the technology. Due to this expansion it has caused difficulties in controlling the misuse of social media by the users. The authorities and the platform providers are continuously on research and keep an eye on the misconducts of users. A misconduct can be identified as an unacceptable or improper behavior of an individual or a group. These misconducts carried in social media includes cyberbullying, Cyber stalking, sexual predation, loss of privacy caused by digital footprints, trolling, online witch hunts, fake news, privacy abuse, killing social skills, addictive content which harm the community and many other issues.
Cyberbullying may be a cause of a simple abusive comment, a nasty rumor targeting a person, race or a place in a digital platform. This is most common among younger users. Though they do it for fun or just to entertain someone or to become popular among their gangs this may cross the lines to unlawful and criminal cases. Cyberbullying is hard to notice, persistent and may be permanent but other than normal face to face bullying it leaves a digital footprint which may be use as an evidence which will help to stop the abuse or take legal actions if required.
“Seshani Cooray and Amaya Suriyapperuma were bullied by body-shaming after the ASUS Lanka Comic Con 2017. They both cosplayed Wonder Woman and upon posting a picture online received massive backlash for their outfits. Their pictures were used in memes that circulated throughout local Facebook pages designed solely to mock and insult the girls.”
Sexual predation is carried out by individuals who commit child sexual abuse via internet. First, they let the child feel that they can talk anything with them, and they show love and affection that the child is willing to have. Then they introduce them to sexual activity by showing them pornography or requesting sexually explicit information and pictures etc. Minors don’t always think before they post, they sometimes upload scandalous pictures and personal information, such as their phone number of themselves in their profiles. Even if this information isn’t readily available, it’s possible to obtain it by chatting with the child or teenagers who are lack of experience and knowledge. Though the platform providers now have many restrictions to make fake profiles, still it’s not that hard to create a one.
Sexting occurs when the images are shared more than 2 consenting adults. This is harsher when the victim is a minor. The reason for that is the production, distribution and storage of sexually explicit images of minors are considered as child pornography under Territory, State and Commonwealth laws.
The Sri Lankan police have a Cyber Crime Unit within the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) equipped to deal with any attacks and the Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) is a great source to stay up to date on the latest threats. Section 345 of Penal Code which deals with sexual harassment, section 372 which deals with extortion, section 483, with criminal intimidation, or threatening a person to act or omit an action in order to avoid blackmailing or a punishment can be used to act against cyber violence. Section 372 and 483 of the penal code can be used to tackle cases of blackmail over the sharing of personal photos or videos. In addition, the section 2 of Obscene Publications Act can also be used against the misconducts such as sharing personal images without consent, or even sharing images which have been explicitly altered using editing software.
We feel that this is theoretically easy for a victim to get rid of these social media misconducts as there are number of legislations against these misconducts. But practically most victims do not pursue these solutions due to flaws that exist in the system of reporting online violence to authorities. Therefore, intervention of the authorities and the platform providers is necessary in advance to prevent these misconducts than curing after it occurred.
Facebook — Social media king, has initiated a series of measures, including blocking reported fake accounts to discourage fake news, monitor and control abuse and increase advertisement transparency. March 2016 5–6 % of accounts in Facebook were fake. Not only Facebook most of the social media platforms need some major changes in their Policy. They should focus on getting more help from users to remove these fake accounts. But now the issue is that the users are not that interested in reporting fake accounts because most of them think it’s none of their business until they see their fake account. But this is not the correct way to get rid of this problem. Society should have a better understanding how tall such issues can grow.
The platform providers should increase the restriction levels when a new user is trying to enter the platform. The mechanism should discourage the users to make fake accounts. They should encourage the users more, to report these privacy issues and the fake contents. The existing mechanisms to prevent these misconducts should be reviewed and revised regularly and frequently as the technology is changing frequently. The users get adopted the existing mechanisms fast and find loopholes to go through and mis-behave. Authorities should educate the minors and all the users to avoid getting close with unknown contacts, if something happen without hiding or running away from the issue let them give an opportunity to talk with some authorized person or let them complain. Education system should provide some idea to the students how to respond to such situations. And most important thing is prevention. Discouraging the users to do these activities should always carried out. Authorities can use media, newspapers, education system and awareness programs for this.
Attempts to report violations to Facebook are sometimes met with the response that they do not violate Community Standards. This has particularly been the case, when the content is in Sinhala or Tamil. The language shouldn’t be a matter when it comes to such situations. These restrictions when reporting a misconduct should be removed. The mechanism should be more intelligent. We experienced this in 2019 during the Easter Bomb attack case finally the government had to ban social media and avoid the vast rumor spread which caused an ethnicity problem between two races. Cyber misconducts will fall out of control anytime because the network is enormous. Prevention is always better than cure. So awareness is the key to get rid of such misconducts.
