Online accountability

10/03/10 posted by Liz Niland

On Facebook alone, more than 5 billion pieces of content are shared each week. On YouTube, more than 20 hours of video are uploaded every minute. Could you imagine either of these websites employing enough editors to fact-check and approve every single item posted by their users?

How about Google? What if they replaced their web-crawling spiders with real people who had to verify that every single site they came across was telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Given there were more than 1 trillion unique URLs on the web in mid-2008, it seems to be an incredibly unrealistic prospect.

In the wake of the criminal convictions delivered to the three Google executives in Italy last month, American columnist Ted Rall has not only thrown his support behind the controversial verdict but also suggested full fact-checking be done by gatekeepers employed by Google and other online content sharing platforms.

Hypothetically threatening to post an “atrocious lie about you being a drugged-out kiddie porn entrepreneur” to his blog and various social networks, Rall incorrectly argues that “there's nothing you can do about it”. Unfortunately for Rall, if he tried this, there is certainly a lot someone could do about it and, if that were to happen to me, my biff would certainly not be with Google, Facebook or any other website - it would be with the perpetrator himself.

One would expect that as a blogger, Rall should be up on at least the basic ins and outs of how search engines and social media websites function, but the following statement shows that this is clearly not the case: “It's not like Google can't afford to hire an editorial staff. Shouldn't they have to make sure that, for example, I don't libel you as some crazy porn gangster?” And yes, he’s serious.

As posted on Techdirt, Rall’s reasoning “defies logic. He seems unable to comprehend the difference between a publisher and a tool or service provider.” Writer Mike Masnick goes on to say that Rall “seems terrified of free speech, and would prefer that it only come from the 'professionals' like himself”. Given the Facebook censorship issues we’ve seen recently in Australia, I have no doubt that many people would, sadly, agree with Rall’s sentiments.

I wholeheartedly agree with Masnick on this point - just because the internet may be used as the medium for spreading a false statement, “destroying the freedom to communicate and to express yourself online” does not make sense. Whether online or offline, individual accountability is still a key concept that many people, such as Rall, have clearly not yet grasped.