The lack of repercussions on social media 

The lack of consequences for cyberbullying on social media websites, like instagram is the reason there are so many hateful people on social media. As the social media platform most tolerant of hate and negativity, toxicity, embarrassment, and cyberbullying, Instagram should include a mechanism for banning users who are mean to other users if the number of complaints lodged against them is credible and sufficient. Because currently there is no punishment on instagram, people just continue to keep being mean because they don’t see anyone getting punished for it. 

Lets take a look at an example: “Teen queer artist dies by suicide after hate comments on Instagram reel.” Her name was Prashna was a social media influencer, specificicaly a makeup artist. In one of the instagram reels she posted, she received a numerous amount of hate. “the artist’s comment section was flooded with over 4,000 homophobic remarks which abetted them to die by suicide. The artist had over 16,500 followers on their Instagram handle, ‘glamitupwithpranshu’.”. This influencer got so much hatespeech from other users that she felt the need to commit death by suicide. Another example is on TikTok in 2023. A little kid, Kevin Gabor struggles with Ostiogenisis imperfecta was attacked on TikTok. He was receiving so much hate online. “”You know I can’t play, I can’t run. I can’t hang out with friends outside. I can’t do a bunch of stuff,” Kevin pleads. “Because I could break something and I have an online community so that I can share and have friends with and you’re trying to take that away from me.” 

Cyberbullying is unfortunately a very “popular” thing in the world. “Cyberbullying is the use of technology to harass, threaten, embarrass, or target another person”. As a result of this, the victims of CB face many issues including, bad mental health, embarrassment, and low emotional stress. When doing research on the consequences of cyberbullying, the key word that shows up in a lot of search results is “may”. “The person may get suspended from school”…. “The person may face serious penalties”. It shouldn’t be “may” it should be they will. “They will face serious penalties”… “they will get suspended from school”. Websites like instagram or X, let to many people off the hook and give all these people too many chances. Again, yes they can be reported, but it seems as though all those sites will do is just ban your account, and that person can make another one. Not to mention, who is checking these accounts, specifically who is running that department. Is someone sitting in front of a screen, declining or accepting who they want banned. Maybe, who knows. But, These cyberbullies keep attacking because the chances of penalties are 50/50. “In a quest to make Instagram a kinder, gentler place, the founders had borrowed from Facebook an AI tool known as DeepText, which was designed to understand and interpret the language people were using on the platform. The next year, they trained it to find and block offensive comments, including racial slurs. By mid-2018, they were using it to find bullying in comments, too. A week after Mosseri took over in October, Instagram announced it wouldn’t just use AI to search for bullying in remarks tacked below users’ posts; it would start using machines to spot bullying in photos, meaning that AI would also analyze the posts themselves.”We already know how unreliable AI can be at times, and we also know that It also can be incorrect. So if they are using Ai to ban users who are being offensive/using hate speech, this technology needs to be very specific and can correctly filter out users who are showing hate towards others.

Additionally, hate speech and discriminatory language have no place on social media platforms. Implementing stricter repercussions for users who engage in hate speech could help create a safer online environment. This could include suspending accounts, removing offensive content. “It means that a small group of private companies have a lot of power over what speech gets heard and what speech doesn’t,” Nott says. “While that might not violate the First Amendment, it is something that people who value free speech should pay attention to [in the future].” 

In conclusion, the hypothesis that Instagram should include a mechanism for banning users who are mean to other users, based on credible and sufficient complaints, holds significant promise for providing  a more positive and inclusive online community. As mentioned before,  social media can be a very positive outlet and hold many beneficial features. But, it also holds negative features and with that holds many issues, specifically cyberbullying and hate. Social media sites like instagram, need to hold more of the people who hate accountable. If there are no repercussions involved and nobody faces consequences, these people will continue to keep hating, which is the root to why so many people hate social media. 

References

Desk, N. N. (2023, November 25). Teen queer artist dies by suicide after hate comments on Instagram reel. NDTV.com. https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/teen-queer-artist-from-madhya-pradeshs-ujjain-dies-by-suicide-after-hate-comments-on-reel-claims-actor-4604517 

Miller, J. (2020, April 21). Can Hate Be Banned From Social Media? New Jersey State Bar Foundation. https://njsbf.org/2020/04/21/can-hate-be-banned-from-social-media/

Steinmetz, K. (2019, July 8). Inside Instagram’s ambitious plan to fight bullying. Time. https://time.com/5619999/instagram-mosseri-bullying-artificial-intelligence/ 

Walther, J. B. (2022). Social Media and Online Hate. Current Opinion in Psychology, 45.        https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.12.010

Wetzel, J. (2023, August 29). Disabled child’s desperate plea to stop online trolls brought out the best in Social Media. Upworthy. https://www.upworthy.com/childs-plea-to-trolls-brought-out-social-media-best