Who can forget the shameful anti-Islamic abuse directed at the Qu’ranic Society Dar Tahfez El-Quran as they sought permission to build a school in Camden last year. The adhoc meetings attended by concerned locals were filled with anonymous ‘belligerent’ interjections and opinions - which were for the most part based upon uninformed stereotypes and irrational fears.

Contrast this with the audience participation at one of your seminars - many of which I have personally attended. Questions are asked and opinions put forth in a rational and organised manner. Many participants even raise their hands so as not to speak out of turn. I’m sure the response to inappropriate or continual interjections would remain the same had the speaker submitted them to a blog.

Not all meetings - on- or offline - will be run in an ideal manner, but that’s democracy and free speech for you. ‘Appropriate behaviour’ does not have a single definition and ‘civility’ is not always a fair rule of measure.

-Paul (my real name)

stephen bartos Says:
March 8th, 2009 at 7:09 pm

I have commented on this blog, not often but on occasion over a number of years. The only time I’ve been subject to unwarranted ad hominem attack on this blog, the attacker was Clive Hamilton. I prefer names to anonymity but consider that a matter of personal preference rather than a normative judgement. Anonymity may give some commenters moral licence for brutality; but it can also protect commenters from that kind of attack

Here’s the thing, Professor. “Free-speech” means exactly that

Allow me to demonstrate

FREE
-Adjective

exempt or released from something specified that controls, restrains, burdens, etc.

(www.dictionary.reference.com)

“But if free speech means encouraging a free-flowing dialogue that draws the public into an exploration of alternative ideas and enriches civic culture, then the Internet is its enemy.”

Also Professor, I have a question in regards to this statement.

How can dialogue be “free-flowing” (as you so put it) if there are restrictions on what one can say, and the manner in which they say it? Wouldn’t that force one to refrain from immediately voicing their original comment (even if briefly) in order to carefully choose the words they use, and the manner in which they use them?

My point is - How can this possibily constitute as being “free-flowing”?

regards,
Anonymous

Right now on Twitter, I’m in a real-time discussion with about over 3000 people about how wrong you are. I couldn’t have done that before the interwebs.

Fairly simple. I agree with Jin. This is surely a parody.

Found this on Juan Quiggler’s site about you (on this very subject). Sound pretty uncivil, Clive. Want to explain why?

But the owners of “Joel B1” don’t want bricks thrown through their windows, dog poo smeared on the Porche etc.

So, much like NIKE is a respected (not exploitative) brand there’s something to said for anonymity.

Anonymity has more than one virtue. It is possible to float ideas that one doesn’t necessarily want to follow through on or be committed to supporting ever after. It also allows comment on issues on which the dangers, reasonably anticipated and totally left field, of arousing wrath and having to back down humiliatingly (possibly for some trivial slip) are too great for something one only has limited time for. E.g. you could so easily get caught in the Israeli-Arab propaganda grinder when you thought you were simply giving innocent examples of why both sides might be regarded as to blame, or as having a case…

What an excellent observation. I look forward to the expansion of this principle to encompass voting, so that everyone is accountable for their political leanings.

Others have also discussed this. Clay Shirky, for example, from a few years ago:

http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html

I’m not sure though that the Internet is really the enemy of free speech, as Clive concludes.

I think he means the Web mostly, not the Internet. Usenet has been around for longer, but the structure does not allow for more constructs like reputation (Digg, etc). The other uses of the internet surely can’t be called an enemy of free speech. Email, an enemy of free speech? You might as well cite Aussie Post. Be specific, Clive, be accurate.

Really, though, it’s early pioneering days still on the Web in terms of large-scale human interaction. Calling the web an enemy of free speech goes a bit far. If your words are strong enough, they will stand, no matter what petty abuse is thrown at them. I’d say that those guys in China translating the Economist would have a different opinion to Clive.

Zed Shaw has the same concern “The Internet needs identity, reputation, and retribution”, and he sees the solution as hate:

http://www.savingtheinternetwithhate.com/

I’m not sure that’s what you had in mind, though.

Clive writes, “The belligerence would not be tolerated if the perpetrators’ identities were known because they would be rebuffed and criticised by those who know them.”

That’s utter garbage, and speaks loudly of Clive’s inability to comprehend discourse on the internet.

Perpretrators’ identities may be unknown TO HIM, but they’d be equally unknown and obscure TO HIM if they used their real names. The plain fact of the matter is that most participants in online discussion forums tend to use the same identity within the context of that forum, and as in other forms of human discourse identity comes with reputation attached.

So if someone’s identity is unfamiliar they’re treated with all the credibility and seriousness of a drive-by commenter. If their identity is well known to other forum participants, those participants will approach their missives from a direction suggested by evaluations of the commentator’s prior contributions.

Clive’s problem is that over the last 12 months or so he’s established an identity and reputation for himself as someone who (yes!) belligerently passes judgment on communities and subjects about which he knows nothing, with the inevitable result that members of those communities and experts on those subjects tend to think his judgments are all a light-weight joke.

If someone sat at my dinner table and pontificated as ignorantly as Clive has about my friends, views, motivations and expertise I’m pretty sure that person would get exactly the same reaction Clive gets when he writes pornography-laden op-eds in AustralianIT. If that person did it in a pub, they’d probably be taken home in a bucket.

We all accept that Clive has a right of free speech, which means he can say these things even if they’re odious and stupid. The correct response to odious and stupid speech is more speech which persuades readers to understand its odious stupidity. Whether or not it’s anonymous is irrelevant.

In the decade and a half since then, things have moved well beyond just whinging about the problem and exaggerating it into a mythical “regular army” of “cyber thugs”. (“Cyber”. How quaint.) There’s plenty of discussions about how to manage communities online, and even people like the redoubtable Laurel Papworth teaching regular courses on how to do it.

This is just another propaganda piece in your long-term battle to portray the internet as “the enemy”, isn’t i? Lines like “the brutality of public debate” keep omitting one key word: “some”. Once again, you take the bad behaviour of “some” people and conflate it with “all”. The bad guys are an “army”, the civilised communities in the “corners”, an implied minority. But where are the statistics backing up your claims? Where, Clive? Why this obsession with the negatives?

I know you’re smart enough to realise that unsubstantiated generalities are a corrupt technique. You also know that an argument is still valid even if expressed rudely. You criticise logical fallacies when others use them. Why do you imagine it’s acceptable when you do it?

- mark