Abuse
Online abuse, like offline abuse, spans the full gamut of negative experiences. From the exploitation of your personal information, through the cruelty of cyberbullying, to the most horrific cases of human trafficking. In each case, the victim suffers, and collectively we all suffer, for the abuse that can happen to one, can happen to anyone.
Combating abuse requires compassion for the victims, intolerance of the abuse, and consequences for the abuser.
Compassion for victims means giving the support they need, for as long as they need, to heal. It means we place blame squarely on the abuser, not the abused.
Intolerance of online abuse must become a persistent attitude, making it socially unacceptable to be an abuser. This means speaking out, rather than remaining silent, if you see, read or hear abuse occurring. It’s a requirement of decency that we speak out; when we fail to do so, both abusers and their victims interpret our silence as consent.
Consequences need to be consistent and appropriate to be credible. If the chances of being held accountable are low there is little to deter abusers. Similarly, if the consequences are so minor as to be essentially meaningless to the abuser, there is little to deter the abuse.
It is commendable that many online services are swift to react to abuse with warnings, suspensions or outright banishment of abusers from their sites. By doing so they send a clear message that offenses aren’t acceptable. Yet this offers little in the way of deterrent for the more determined abusers - they simply create a new account or move to another, similar service and continue their pattern.
Some online abuse cases do proceed with legal action, but the burden of proof combined with the lack of resources within law enforcement mean only a fraction of abusers will ever be held accountable for their actions, meaning again that most abusers will not have to face consequences.
Acting alone, these deterrents are all that a company or the law can do. Acting together we may be able to find additional methods of deterrence and accountability.