Online Anonymity and Anonymous Abuse

John Nicolson Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[John Nicolson (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP) [V]]

Online abuse is a curse. Once upon a time when kids got bullied at school, that bullying stopped at the school gates. Even if they did not talk about their ordeals—and sadly, we know that many children feel that they cannot—back at home, in a loving household, they were safe. All that has changed with social media. Today, the bullies and trolls pursue their victims home and online. We know that this can be traumatic for children. We know that some have, tragically, taken their own lives as a result.

The sadism comes in many forms. Recently we have learned of the phenomenon of flashing GIFs posted and targeted at children with epilepsy, with the intention of causing seizures. Let that sink in for a moment— trolls targeting epileptic kids with potentially dangerous consequences, again, under the guise of anonymity. Paedophiles have exploited the internet since its inception. With false identities and ever more sophisticated software, young people can be entrapped by those pretending to be someone they are not.

As a member of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, I have listened to evidence from the social media companies—TikTok, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. They all promise to target the problem, but they are all woefully unresponsive. I asked a TikTok boss recently why he was not more tenacious in tackling anti-vaccination disinformation targeted at young people. He said that his company had thousands of moderators hot on the heels of the anti-vaxxers. It only took me a few moments to find a TikTok account with hundreds of thousands of followers posting lies with impunity.

Politicians are not meant to moan, or we get called self-indulgent, but we all know the shocking abuse sent to women politicians in particular. When the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon revealed personal details of tragic miscarriages she had suffered, she was deluged by trolls mocking her or saying that she was lying about her family grief. A Holyrood magazine survey found that a third of MSPs had received a death threat, with a third of female MSPs receiving a threat of a sexual nature in addition. Before the 2019 election, a survey showed that many female MPs who were not standing again cited the abuse they received online as a major factor in their decision.

Misogyny, homophobia and racism have sadly always been a part of politics, but they are now magnified by the perfect poisonous storm: a huge worldwide audience and anonymity. I have had a wee taste of it myself recently. I praised online a young trans constituent of mine last year who had bravely spoken of her life in a BBC documentary. Almost instantly, a sinister organisation called the LGB Alliance began trolling me. It offered the reward of a retweet to anyone who donated money to it in my name. I was, as a result, deluged by abuse from anonymous accounts. I was called a rape enabler, a misogynist and, although I am an openly gay man, a homophobe. As an openly gay man, I was also called a “greasy bender”.

The LGB Alliance was thrown off the country’s two largest crowdfunders as a hate group, but Twitter would not take its account down, despite it clearly and egregiously violating Twitter’s own rules. I am a man in my 50s. The experience was not pleasant, but I was acutely conscious of all the young trans people reading the venom and despairing. They have, after all, been subjected to a vile online onslaught in recent weeks and months.

There can be no accountability in anonymity. Social media is now so ingrained in our lives that it cannot be allowed to continue without some form of verification. The cowards who send death threats or seizure-inducing messages or who attempt to groom children would not dare be so bold if we knew who they were, or at least if the social media companies knew who they were. Of course, the trolling does not exclusively come from the UK. Abuse, misinformation and disinformation flood in from Russian bots, attempting to undermine our values and democracy, and over the course of the pandemic, they threaten our health with covid disinformation.

Like the hon. Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie), I believe that verification is the best way to protect people online. That does not mean that people—especially those who are vulnerable—should not be able to use a nom de plume, but social media users should have the option to prove their identity. That could come with an equivalent to the blue tick for verified profiles on Twitter. Such verification would allow us to know who we are interacting with online and know that those we talk to are who they say they are. Users would also then be able to decide whether to block all non-verified users. This would offer protection to parents worried about their children’s safety online, to those who wish to avoid Russian and other bots, and to all of us who would choose to talk only to real people.

Who among us does not seek to stem the avalanche of poison, abuse and disinformation? Will the social media companies embrace such proposals and self-enforce? The evidence suggests not. The Government need to get tough. Soft-touch regulation is not working.