Just to confirm that our CharltonLife Twitter account will be participating in the social blackout over the next few days.
We have operated a forum for 15 years. It’s not perfect and we appreciate how challenging and contentious the balance between freedom and moderation can be.
Even on something as moderated as ours, we know ‘banter’ can sometimes be misconstrued without context or too personal, we know posting with anger can sometimes cross the line, we know people can make mistakes with hindsight. We know people tell jokes with good intentions but others just don’t find funny. We know people can be too domineering in making their point, we know people sometimes just don’t realise, or forget, they are ‘publishing’ comments for the world to see. And we know people don’t always realise the personal accountability of their contributions.
But we also know that on major social media platforms there is a level of contribution that is significantly more nasty, edgy, vile to anything we have to moderate.
Even at our tiny, volunteer-driven level, we are currently reviewing potential changes and what we can do to reduce hate. We believe the companies who operate these huge platforms could, and should, do so much more to discourage it, moderate it, reduce it and punish it than they currently do.
The revenues generated by these companies are phenomenal. They have to be better. They have to be more responsible. They have to devote more resource, energy and will to this.
The race to the bottom that popular social media helped fuel has to end. Hopefully this small step may prove to be the catalyst.
#StopOnlineHate #StopOnlineAbuse
