What threats against the Bannatynes tell us about Twitter

Since my earlier post this week events took a dark twist with threats against Duncan Bannatyne’s daughter. I was asked to update my blog for the Guardian’s Comment is Free site. Here it is :

I don’t blame Duncan Bannatyne. If somebody threatened my daughter I’d probably have similar feelings of rage. Then I would quietly scold myself for letting one of the mad, bad and sad people flooding onto social networks get to me. In the Dragon’s case it is not clear whether the twitter account used to make the threat was hacked, faked or made up but whichever way it is a vivid example of how something that started out as fun, welcoming and astonishingly useful has become a dark, stressful and irritating place at times.

There are plenty of anonymous cowards on the internet who abuse others, spread hatred and distribute obscene criminal material. And there are anonymous heroes on the internet too, who fight repression, spread inspiration, ideas, wit and truth. It is entirely understandable that Facebook, Google and others would want to stamp on the bad by ending anonymity, but they have not yet done enough to show how they would preserve the good.

Having been a Twitter evangelist the truth is I find it a bit less enjoyable these days. It is more powerful but less fun. Feels more like work, less like leisure. In the early-adopter era the social network was a largely warm environment, where abuse was relatively scarce and passionate debate was conducted with respect and good humour. I would tweet about X-Factor one minute and the election the next without fear that the trolls and pedants would start picking holes and hurling abuse. So I am less carefree about my tweets than I was.

Obviously anonymity grants people confidence to say what they would never say to your face. As Randi Zuckerberg recently argued, if people were forced to reveal their identities online most would be less aggressive and more thoughtful. But without anonymity we would be starved of tweets from Egypt, Syria, Iran and repressive regimes around the world where internet anonymity is unleashing new freedoms and ideas. We might lose the mobile phone videos that tell us what is really going on in Hama, the whistleblowers who reveal corruption and the brave insiders who leak the things the powerful try to keep from us. And yes, we’d miss some of the gossip. It is not clear how anonymity online could ever be stamped out altogether. But the likes of Facebook and Google need to show how they would support the free flow of important information if widespread anonymity was lost.

In my ideal world social networks would have borders which I could chose to cross for new levels of content: people I love, people I know, people I have heard of and people who are complete strangers. At the moment I use Facebook as a reasonably safe private zone – only for friends and family. I use Twitter as a public place, for work and also for fun but not a place I reveal much about my private life. So Twitter is far more likely to direct me towards new ideas, video and news but is also a place where I must have a thick skin. I have only just signed up to Google+ and am not really using it yet – I can see why having different circles might mean I can have the benefits of both Facebook and Twitter in one place but not until everyone embraces it.

The trouble is, I want to be accessible to everyone and to have access to everything but I do not want to be constantly braced for abuse and offensive material. I want my children to have the broadest possible horizons and to search out new ideas and relationships online but I do not want to them encounter either twisted minds or thoughtless morons.

It is impossible to say whether anonymity would make any difference to criminal threats of the kind the Bannatynes have suffered. It is at the extreme end of bad online etiquette – where you should never legislate for the majority. So I find myself returning to a simple proposition. Respect is the vital component to all human relationships, whether in person or online, anonymous or identified. Without it social networks become jungles that we will start to fear, like dangerous suburbs that are best avoided. Just as “never press send in anger” finally sunk in to most of us on email, we need to recapture the culture of those early adopter days on Twitter. We need to preserve the protection of anonymity but fight for a culture of respect. Or none of this will be fun anymore.