Isn't it about time the net closed in on anonymous cyber-bullies?
England international footballer Micah Richards suffered racist taunts on Twitter this week and was told to go "play for Africa". He is the latest in a growing list of black Premier League players -- including Anton Ferdinand and Sammy Ameobi -- to suffer from online abuse at the hands of anonymous attackers.
Lady Gaga's supporters, known as 'little monsters', are living up to their name online by making catty jibes about Adele (pictured) -- the American's musical rival. Twitter is filled with crude jokes about Adele's weight.
So it's no wonder that more people are calling for the end of internet aliases.
Facebook's marketing director, Randi Zuckerberg (sister of CEO Mark), said: "Anonymity on the internet has to go away. People behave a lot better when they have their real names down."
Of course, internet abuse is not limited to celebrities. Cyber-bullying has become a huge problem in our schools, making the lives of some children unbearable and even leading to suicide, such as the high-profile case of young Irish girl Phoebe Prince who took her life in Massachusetts in January 2010.
Jim Harding, of bully4U.ie, tries to counter internet bullying by running workshops around the country. "Cyber-bullying is affecting more than one in three teens in Ireland," he said. "The victims of anonymous cyber-bullying don't know the bully and this can prove very isolating for them in a school setting, where they come to distrust all their peers."
He added: "Anonymity encourages people to act in a way they might not if they were named."
Andrew Power, head of the School of Creative Technologies at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, said researchers called this the Online Disinhibition Effect -- where we are more likely to say or do things that we would not normally do offline and cite anonymity as a major factor. So surely an online space where everyone was out in the open would be healthier.
Not so, argues TJ McIntyre, law lecturer at UCD. "Without anonymity there is a very real risk of people being persecuted for their online opinions," he told Weekend Review this week.
McIntyre argues that the dismantling of false identities online would devalue the internet and further disadvantage the marginalised. He also says to a certain extent we need to learn to ignore the vitriolic posts.
Even if we wanted to ban internet anonymity, it would be tricky. Just because I register an online account with a common name like John Smith doesn't mean that I am John Smith.
It seems abusive comments will continue but it is the abuse of more vulnerable young people that is causing the real damage and as we stand there is no easy way to catch the culprits.
- Fergal Gallagher
Originally published in
