How social media is fuelling our flames

Max Du Preez, one of the respected journalists who have been on the end of stinging assaults from Julius Malema and his army of Twitter followers, once compared SA to a nuclear power reactor. He noted that the fuel rods have a tendency to automatically sink into the coolers when they get too hot. However, Legalbrief reports that social media is not helping this escape mechanism. This has been all too evident with the hate speech case between the EFF and the SA National Editors Forum (Sanef) case in the Pretoria Equality Court. And Ferial Haffajee – another scribe who has faced the wrath of the EFF – argues the Internet and the powerful social media platforms now host among the worst forms of violence against journalists and are a rising threat to media freedom. In a Daily Maverick analysis, Haffajee warns that female journalists are being targeted in a trend called ‘cyber-misogyny’. ‘I’m not sure that the battle against online violence will be won in the courts; but I do know it will be won by the powerful social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and Google doing more to prevent technology being weaponised in the way it has been. Malema is a general and Twitter is his army of 2.4m followers.’ Haffajee notes that trolling armies are now used around the world by politicians to grow, protect or gain power. They include Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines who has used Twitter and his legal arsenal to hound the journalist and editor Maria Ressa and her site rappler.com. ‘In India, journalist Rana Ayyub is a thorn in the side of Narendra Modi’s growing nationalist authoritarianism. She is trolled by a bot force of hundreds of thousands of Twitter accounts and by real-life supporters of Modi too.’

In a similar vein, Stephen Grootes warns that the spat between Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane and President Cyril Ramaphosa has been weaponised by social media. In another Daily Maverick analysis, he argues that ‘this is a fight in which facts are casualties’. ‘Of course, we are not alone in this problem. The same dynamic is playing out in the US around President Donald Trump, and in the UK with Brexit, Europe with Poland and Hungary, Asia with Turkey and the Philippines, South America with Brazil and Venezuela. Facts no longer seem to matter. Social media, and Twitter in particular, amplifies this trend to the point where it may be impossible for it to turn back. Political movements come and go, divisions can be breached by new developments and situations. But the longer this particular chaos continues, the more terminally divided our society will become. Now, that is a process that can’t continue for a long time without a catastrophic societal breakdown.’

The EFF case relates to Malema’s 2018 call for his followers to deal decisively with certain journalists who he accused of defending white monopoly capital. Sanef and the five journalists – Adriaan Basson, Barry Bateman, Du Preez, Pauli van Wyk and Ranjeni Munusamy – want the court to order the EFF to denounce the harassment of journalists and to issue an interdict preventing the party from directly or indirectly harassing the journalists. Sanef and the journalists say Malema’s comments led to a stream of online threats and vitriol from EFF supporters who wanted to intimidate them from doing their work, causing them to fear for their safety, as well as emotional stress. Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi yesterday told the court that the EFF were equally appalled by Twitter trolls harassing journalists, since they were also guilty of abusing the party. Ngcukaitobi said blaming the EFF for violence was unfair, and that the third parties who harassed journalists should be expected to take responsibility for their actions. A report on The Citizen site notes that Ngcukaitobi said the EFF has taken a clear stance against violence. Ngcukaitobi warned the court against limiting the EFF’s freedom of speech, claiming that as an opposition party ‘it has only one instrument to hold power accountable: speech, nothing else’. He accused Sanef of cherry-picking parts of Malema’s speech while ignoring his instruction not to use violence against members of the media and his suggestion that he was friends with some journalists.

The EFF questioned the role of Ranjeni Munusamy, who joined the Sanef in filing the hate speech charges. In her supporting affidavit Munusamy said as a result of comments made on social media, particularly Twitter, journalists who were allegedly singled out for abuse by Malema became victims of harassment and threats, notes a Cape Argus report. It says according to Berger, the threats against Munusamy began on 5 July last year, when Malema allegedly urged EFF members not to treat Munusamy ‘like a journalist as she is behaving like a politician’. The court heard that Malema allegedly told his supporters ‘we must treat Ranjeni (Munusamy) the same way we treat (Malusi) Gigaba and (Fikile) Mbalula’.

One of the journalists, Pauli Van Wyk, faced abuse on Twitter after Malema called her ‘Satan’ in a tweet. He also refused to condemn a Twitter user who threatened to kill Basson, tweeting: ‘We won’t do it’. The Twitter user identified himself as an EFF supporter. Berger said Malema’s refusal to condemn the death threat was an ‘endorsement of violence’, notes a report in The Citizen. Berger argued that a torrent of abuse and threats of violence had resulted in journalists toning down on their reporting due to the EFF comments, which could be viewed as enabling their supporters. He said the party’s statements created an enabling environment for attacks on certain journalists, who were now vulnerable to harassment. Berger said Malema’s statements constituted hate speech and should be declared as such. The EFF argued they could not be held liable as they did not know and had no control over the people responsible for harassing journalists, but Sanef criticised this view, saying it believed the party’s statements had created an environment where supporters felt justified in threatening journalists.

In the US, controversial Internet message board 8chan went offline Monday after internet infrastructure company Cloudflare stopped providing support for the website used by the suspected gunman in El Paso to post a hate-filled screed. ‘We just sent notice that we are terminating 8chan as a customer effective at midnight tonight Pacific Time. The rationale is simple: they have proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness has caused multiple tragic deaths. Even if 8chan may not have violated the letter of the law in refusing to moderate their hate-filled community, they have created an environment that revels in violating its spirit,’ said Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince. The announcement was an about-turn after Cloudflare earlier told CNN that it had no plans to stop providing its services to 8chan. The company had said it has been in contact with law enforcement about Saturday's mass shooting. The suspect is believed to have posted what police describe as a manifesto on 8chan minutes before the attack. People accused of a synagogue shooting in Poway, California, and shootings at two mosques in New Zealand also reportedly announced their plans on 8chan. ‘We continue to feel incredibly uncomfortable about playing the role of content arbiter and do not plan to exercise it often,’ Prince said in the post.

And a Twitter account that appears to belong to Dayton mass shooter Connor Betts retweeted extreme left-wing and anti-police posts. CNN reports that the most recent tweet on the @iamthespookster account was on 3 August, the day of the shooting, when he retweeted a post saying, ‘Millenials have a message for the Joe Biden generation: hurry up and die.’ Armed with a .223-calibre high-capacity rifle with 100-round drum magazines, Betts fired 41 shots in less than 30 seconds, killing his sister as well as eight seemingly random bystanders in the area.