How the pandemic feeds online trolling
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 16 March 2021
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The coronavirus pandemic has changed the way we behave on the internet. Online trolling is on the rise as people turn to social media to take out their lockdown frustrations.
Marie Keyworth hears from Lisa Forte, who used to work for the UK police's Cyber Crime Unit and has faced online abuse herself. Virginia Mantouvalou says that a social media platform shouldn’t be viewed as “safe space” to express whatever views we wish. But isn't one of the points of social media to connect with like-minded people freely? Marie puts that to Will Oremus, a senior writer for tech magazine OneZero.
Our posts and comments can incur the wrath of not just online mobs, but of our employers too. And, as journalist and author Jon Ronson explains, the collective online herd mentality leaves no room for forgiveness, or redemption.
Producer: Sarah Treanor
(Picture: a man holds his head in his hands and looks at his computer in despair. Credit: Getty Images.)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily. I'm Marie Keyworth. |
| 0:05.4 | Coming up, stuck at home in a pandemic, glued to the internet, the online trolls are becoming |
| 0:10.6 | more active. And I actually have reported some to the police. And the police said to me that |
| 0:15.3 | they've seen with the COVID-19 pandemic, they've seen this get so much worse. |
| 0:21.1 | And what if you post a joke on social media, but the online crowd takes offence? |
| 0:26.5 | Well, it can have serious consequences for your job. |
| 0:29.6 | And they look at your social media and they use what you do on social media as an excuse to dismiss you. |
| 0:34.7 | And this is one of the very worrying aspects of what is happening. |
| 0:38.3 | So is it possible still to carve out truly safe spaces for online interaction? |
| 0:44.1 | That's all in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:49.1 | There's been a few moments where I have literally sat on the floor, turned the lights off and just cried. |
| 0:59.7 | This is Lisa Forte. She's a cyber security expert and a few years ago won the UK's top 100 |
| 1:06.6 | Women in Tech Awards. But for all her expertise in the area, it hasn't stopped her from becoming a |
| 1:12.1 | target of online abuse. And that's not who I am. You know, I'm an incredibly fiery Italian woman who, |
| 1:21.5 | you know, when you meet someone like me, you think, wow, she's so confident and she's so, you know, |
| 1:25.5 | takes everything in her stride. And there were moments where I was just completely broken. |
| 1:30.3 | And I was lashing out at people closest to me. |
| 1:33.9 | It was impacting my relationships, the stress of it, the anxiety caused by my, essentially, my mobile phone and the apps that were on my mobile phone, |
| 1:42.7 | were causing me to have pick arguments |
| 1:45.4 | with people who I'd never pick arguments with. |
| 1:51.6 | Lisa's ordeal with online trolls started just over a year ago in late 2019 when she commented |
| 1:57.2 | on an online article about Brexit. I started getting some pretty horrible comments underneath, sort of publicly on Twitter and |
... |
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