Hate Speech and Social Media Comments

Lately, you and I have been chatting about comments on blog posts and I realized I have been duped.

Duped into thinking that readers are mostly good-hearted folks whose comments add something to the conversation.

Blog comments at StPA range from kind messages of thanks, or information, to good-natured friendly banter and jibes, (yes, M-R, I am looking at you!). However, in ten years of blogging, I’ve never experienced abusive, slanderous language or worse still, threats of lynching in my comments.

This is the stuff of high school novels and bygone times from troubled areas, not something in my little sub-tropical state floating in the Southern Pacific Ocean.

It seems it’s a different reality for some people.

Whilst listening to a FB live stream of a state politician giving a Covid update – who happened to be female, I glanced at the comments, posted thereunder.

I was actually disgusted by the nature of many of the comments. Many, many of them. In particular, a comment from someone named Kevin.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Pexels.com

A dodgy or even derogatory comment from someone with an opposing political ideology would not be that surprising, given it was a politician speaking, but a serious threat, hate speech and people laughing and “liking” that hate speech was shocking. Not once, but twice, with others chiming in.

Disgusting. Immoral.

I can only imagine what it would feel like to read and stomach that kind of rubbish, day after day – even if you have a P.A to do that for you.

I may dislike certain politicians, but I could never even contemplate how I would murder them! I won’t repeat what this offender wrote, but it shocked me beyond belief.

Needless to say, I reported ‘Kevin’s’ shocking comment to FB – (to a possible complaint bot). I say bot because surely no human could post a message such as this, in reply : –

Great! – if threats of lynching and death, meet the community standard you uphold, FB – I want nothing more to do with you.

But I was curious about Kevin. So I looked him up:

Kevin – apparently- hails from Ontario and has, little if any, connection to my sub-tropical corner of the universe. Assuming this is just a sh_t stirrer/potential troll it’s, completely irrelevant to matters here. An impotent person/bot thousands of miles away condemning one of our female politicians in a cruel, disgusting way. That would be like me, an Aussie, making a similar comment on a thread of a male Governor in South Carolina, or perhaps, yes, Ontario.

As I say, completely irrelevant.

But I have now learnt a thing or two about FB and the standards it upholds. And I won’t forget that.

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