ABC journalist Leigh Sales sparked the debate after sharing screenshots of some of the vitriolic abuse she'd received on Twitter.
In the screenshots, Sales is told she’s “in desperate need of a vibrator” and labelled a “rude b**ch” and a “wh**e”.
Sales, who’s long been a target of misogynistic trolls, told that her mentions column on Twitter is “virtually unusable because of the constant stream of abuse”.
She reasoned that due to the sheer volume of abuse on Twitter, the site should ban anonymity and force users to post under their real names.
It’s no secret that women, minorities and people of colour face the brunt of online trolling. In fact, a found one in five Australian women have experienced offensive and sexist messages online.
Dr Sacha Molitorisz, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Media Transition, told The Feed that “anonymity can be used to cloak sexist, racist and homophobic comments and to vilify.”
“There’s a lot of antisocial behaviour on Twitter. You have trolls and bots, and it can be quite a toxic place sometimes,” he said.
But are there good reasons why some users wish to stay anonymous?
Dr Molitorisz said while it’s not a “clear cut issue”, anonymity can be a powerful form of protection.
For instance; it can allow victims of domestic violence to speak out without fear, empower young LGBTIQ people to talk openly about their sexuality and give a voice to those living under oppressive authoritarian regimes.
Anonymity can also help to preserve the general privacy of users, as well as protect workers or whistleblowers, who may fear that voicing an opinion publicly could cost them their jobs.
Dr Lynda Ng is an Honorary Associate in the Department of Chinese Studies at the University of Sydney.
She told The Feed that anonymity has enabled Hong Kong residents to condemn the Chinese Communist Party’s increasing authoritarian rule over the city.
“We look at Twitter in a very anglocentric perspective,” Dr Ng said.
“In the West, we’re normally thinking about cyberbullying or trolling. We forget that Twitter is being used internationally, such as by people in Hong Kong to communicate with people outside,” she added.
Dr Ng said that having international eyes on Hong Kong is important, particularly now that China has enacted its national security law.
allows the CCP to exercise sweeping control over Hong Kong, with critics warning it could be used to stifle criticism of Beijing and crush dissent.
But would banning anonymity on Twitter reduce online abuse like some suggest?
Ginger Gorman is a journalist and cyberhate expert. She told The Feed that “getting rid of anonymity is a simplistic answer to a complex problem.”
In her book "Troll Hunting", Gorman interviewed Neo-Nazi Andrew Auernheimerone, one of the most notorious trolls in the world. She said that while the white supremacist posted under the pseudonym ‘weev’, he was connected to a number of real-life incidents such as the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville.
“We all know who he is -- he's not anonymous -- and it hasn’t changed his behaviour at all,” Gorman said.
In fact, a found “trolls are increasingly using their full name online [and] as a result, a ban on anonymity will likely fail to prevent the feared firestorms but possibly aggravate them even more”.
Researchers at the University of Zurich concluded that trolls often surrender their anonymity in the belief that their comments would be more credible and persuasive under a real name.
So who’s responsible for protecting users?
Dr Molitorisz told The Feed that the onus is too frequently placed on the victim rather than the platform when it comes to handling online abuse.
“There’s just too much of a burden being put on users. And sometimes it’s a case of victim-blaming,” he said.
While Gorman believes the Australian government needs to better legislate social media companies and hold them accountable.
“The social media companies -- private corporations that make billions of dollars from our data -- have created town squares where we are coming to grave harm and they have no duty of care to the public. They are profiting from our distress,” she said.
“Law enforcement must be resourced and trained to deal with this.”
She said one solution, suggested by Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, could be allowing users to be anonymous unless they “do something wrong”.
“He proposed that we use a kind of system much like driving a car with a number plate," she said.
"Ostensibly, you are anonymous on the roads until you do something wrong. But once you do, you’re easily trackable from your number plate."
But Dr Ng believes that handing over real names to social media platform gives them “the perfect excuse to data-mine”.
“If these companies get hacked, from the Hong Kong perspective, what’s stopping the government from getting them to hand people's details over?,” she said.
Instead, Dr Ng suggests, social media platforms should hire more moderators and carefully attempt to weed out hate speech.
“Focusing on the anonymity factor is a very easy bandaid. It might not really solve very much and it’s almost a misdirection to say it’s only anonymous accounts that are trolls.”
SBS The Feed has contacted Twitter for comment.
