It’s time for editors of online platforms to ensure that offensive comments are weeded out, says Eusebius McKaiser.
I completely agree with recent remarks made by Minister Blade Nzimande about the disgrace that is racism on online platforms. I also agree with him that news website owners and managers, in particular, don’t take racism seriously enough.
If they did take racism seriously, they would stop pretending that there is nothing they can do about racism on their platforms.
The first point to make is that racism and hate speech are neither legally nor morally acceptable. If you ask editors, they will tell you that they monitor their websites, and delete comments that constitute illegal speech, or unethical remarks that are posted. The mechanisms for achieving this, they will tell you, vary from human beings monitoring the websites, to fancy little programs that react when certain words appear on the comment sections.
But the reality is that for years now, South African websites have failed to eliminate racism once it appears on websites. This is despite claims that monitoring systems are in place. I am happy to take an in-house example in the first instance: iol.co.za is a racism hotbed. My bosses have assured me that processes are in place at Independent Media to monitor comments on iol.co.za.
Yet, if you look at comments right now below the online version of this article that you’re reading, you will see plenty of responses, ranging from legally permissible, but morally unacceptable, comments, to comments that are illegal in terms of our hate speech laws.
And if you try to post a comment to alert the website manager, see what happens. Try it. Then come back to the iol website in a few hours. I guarantee you the illegal and unethical remarks will still be there. South African editors lie if they claim that effective online monitoring happens. It doesn’t.
And this is true across all the popular news websites in South Africa – the worst is news24.com, but others aren’t free of this menace. A website like politicsweb.co.za is also a tissue of bigotry and hate speech. Don’t believe me? Go onto those platforms right now and tell me I’m lying.
Would it be a violation of free speech norms for online editors to starve trolls of space for posting their hatred? Someone said the other day it would not “feel right” to close comment sections. That’s not sufficient. We need argument why valuing free speech compels us to accept unmonitored comment sections.
No troll has a right to be allowed to post hatred online. There is no commercial, legal or social duty on editors to provide the space for illegal and immoral speech. Editors shouldn’t fear they will be labelled opponents of free speech if they close down comment sections.
I would happily invite a critic to make the argument for why I have a duty to put up, as online editor, with hate speech. I don’t, and I haven’t come across compelling argument yet why the acid test of free speech commitment is to put up with trolls.
If racists want to express racism, they are allowed to do so. They can set up their own blogs, they can express themselves freely on social media platforms, they could try their luck on talk radio platforms, etc. But newspapers don’t have a duty to give them space. Let them create their own spaces.
The remaining issue, I guess, is whether it is counterproductive to close comment sections. If we want to eliminate racism, one might think, then racism should not be driven underground, but dealt with openly.
This is empirically false. Steve Hofmeyr, Dan Roodt and their racist fans remain racists despite the current freedom they enjoy to express racism on online comment sections. Their racism hasn’t been reduced just because they’ve been allowed to show it off on iol or news24.
And you, as a progressive reader who hates racism, don’t have the energy to engage these trolls online on these websites. So there is no instrumental value in allowing their nonsense to be posted and flaunted. Why must we enable them to promote hate?
The only solution that doesn’t involve closing comment sections is to have a real person monitoring these sites full-time – someone trained in the meaning of illegal speech and who can judge the grey area of legal speech that is still morally odious.
But let’s keep it real. Not one South African newsroom will pay for this job during a time of shrinking media budgets. So we shouldn’t pretend effective monitoring will happen. It won’t. It is too costly. The alternative is to close these comment sections and see if the world comes to an end.
If naked racism and illegal speech would never be allowed into the hard copy of your newspaper, why on earth do you as editor feel pressured to allow it online? There’s no need. And your liberal credentials won’t be taken away.
* Eusebius McKaiser is the best-selling author of A Bantu In My Bathroom and Could I Vote DA? A Voter’s Dilemma. He is currently working on his third book, Searching For Sello Duiker.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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