Protecting Children Online? the Information Society Series Laura Denardis and Michael Zimmer, Series Editors
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Protecting Children Online? The Information Society Series Laura DeNardis and Michael Zimmer, Series Editors Interfaces on Trial 2.0, Jonathan Band and Masanobu Katoh Opening Standards: The Global Politics of Interoperability, Laura DeNardis, editor The Reputation Society: How Online Opinions Are Reshaping the Offline World, Hassan Masum and Mark Tovey, editors The Digital Rights Movement: The Role of Technology in Subverting Digital Copyright, Hector Postigo Technologies of Choice? ICTs, Development, and the Capabilities Approach, Dorothea Kleine Pirate Politics: The New Information Policy Contests, Patrick Burkart After Access: The Mobile Internet and Inclusion in the Developing World, Jonathan Donner The World Made Meme: Public Conversations and Participatory Media, Ryan Milner The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy, Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz Digital Countercultures and the Struggle for Community, Jessica Lingel Protecting Children Online? Cyberbullying Policies of Social Media Companies Tijana Milosevic foreword by Sonia Livingstone The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2017 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Stone Serif by Westchester Book Composition. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Milosevic, Tijana, author. Title: Protecting children online? : cyberbullying policies of social media companies / Tijana Milosevic. Description: Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, [2017] | Series: The information society series | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017017866 | ISBN 9780262037099 (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Online social networks--Moral and ethical aspects. | Internet industry--Moral and ethical aspects. | Cyberbullying--Prevention. Classification: LCC HM742 .M58 2017 | DDC 302.30285--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017017866 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books open access for the public good. The open access ISBN for this book is 978-0-262-34408-1. More information about the initiative and links to the open access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org. The Department of Media and Communication at the University of Oslo also generously assisted the open access publication of this book. To my aunt, Vesna, for stepping in when it was tough Contents Foreword by Sonia Livingstone ix Acknowledgments xiii I Cyberbullying, Dignity, and Children’s Rights 1 1 When Cyberbullying Ends in Suicide 3 2 Can E-safety Compromise Children’s Rights? 21 3 Shaping Company Responsibility: Privatized Public Sphere 45 II Vagaries of Self-Regulation 63 4 Perils of Politics-Driven Regulation 65 5 Industry Self-Regulation in the US and in the EU 87 6 Untangling the Companies’ Motives and Actions 105 7 The Roles of NGOs in Search of Transparency and Effectiveness 147 III Policy Solutions 169 8 Strengths and Limitations of Self-Regulation 171 9 Toward a Culture of Dignity 193 Appendix A 199 Appendix B 203 Notes 213 References 221 Index 269 Foreword In this age of social media, society finds itself paying extraordinarily close attention to phenomena that have, through past decades or even centuries, lurked well under the radar of public attention. The bullying and hostilities that occur among children at school and elsewhere have long been dismissed as banal—just what kids do, hardly deserving of public scrutiny or effortful intervention. The ambiguities of children’s play, including the dubious pleasures of testing personal boundaries, transgressing adult norms, and, on occasion, experimenting with hurting others, have until recently been firmly relegated—if noticed at all—to the private realm, a matter for parents, perhaps teachers. But today, many of children’s interactions—what they like or say, who they know or hate, when they behave well or badly, and whether they are happy, bored or desperate—all of this is recorded, tracked, monitored, and monetized on proprietary networks. Thus, children’s troubles are newly accessible to intervention and regulation, in principle at least, and not just by the parents, teachers, or community actors who know them as individuals, nor even by the government that, after all, bears the ultimate responsibility for their welfare. Also implicated are the biggest multinational corporations the world has ever seen: technology companies headquartered elsewhere, driven by financial and political interests to innovate fast in the global competition to dominate society’s collective attention. Their corporate concerns are so distant from the realities of their users’ lives that many of these companies even refuse to recognize that children use their services, let alone take responsibility for them. Why should these corpora- tions care that their services have become so meaningful to children that they couldn’t live without them, checking for updates every few minutes, pinning their hopes on the next notification and, sometimes, tragically, dreading the next message so intensely that they may take their own life. x Foreword The loudest chronicles of this transformation are the news stories that proclaim with indecent relish the suffering among young social media users. Often cavalier in their reporting of prevalence statistics and simplistic in inferring technological causes for psychological effects, the news media are proving effective in banging the drum for society to “do something.” But what exactly should be done, who should do it, and will it work? Tijana Milosevic’s insightful book shows how complex and difficult it is to find effective solutions to cyberbullying, among other online problems. And there are a host of reasons why this is true. As Milosevic clearly explains for the benefit of those new to this field, there are some genuine organizational, technical, and regulatory challenges, which dispel any hope of a quick-fix technical solution. But there are also some political challenges arising from shifting power struggles between states and corporate entities, being played out in the esoteric but crucial domain of internet governance. While the media, NGOs, children’s rights activists, and parenting groups call for action to prevent cyberbullying, the numerous small companies they try to target keep changing, thus continuing to be blind to the needs of children on their networks. Meanwhile, the public relations and corporate social responsibility teams at the big companies have become proficient at claiming the operation of proprietary solutions, albeit with little transpar- ency or accountability to the public, thereby adeptly evading regulatory responsibility for children’s welfare. Further complicating matters, it is also the case that society does not want multinational corporates acting in loco parentis (or, as one of Milosevic’s informants puts it, as “judge and jury” when relations among children become fraught). And, for reasons of free speech, expression, and rights to privacy, society does not want social net- work companies surveilling and intervening in the everyday interactions of either adults or children. In trying to unravel the pressing conundrum of incidence, causation, responsibility, and practicalities regarding cyberbullying, Milosevic urges us to look more deeply at the ethical infrastructure of the society that has both produced and failed to address this problematic behavior. As she argues, it is incumbent on society now to debate the critical consequences of the privatization of the digital public sphere, and to address the chal- lenges this poses to human dignity—for children in particular, but also for those who live among them. In this sense, cyberbullying is a highly visible manifestation of a much larger set of problems facing all of us. If society would commit to taking forward Milosevic’s recommendations to reduce cyberbullying, children and the wider public would benefit. I hope Foreword xi the host of stakeholders currently scratching their heads, investing their scarce resources, and generally worrying about cyberbullying will read this book and take its advice. What do we have to lose? Sonia Livingstone London School of Economics and Political Science Acknowledgments I would like to thank all the wonderful people who have supported me throughout this research and book-writing process, as well as during my PhD studies, with apologies to all those whose names do not appear in the following lines. My gratitude goes out to my brave and caring family without whose unconditional love and support none of this would have been possible: To my loving grandparents Katica and Lazar Radak, who saved my life and enabled my education. To my mother Snezana Radak, who gave me every- thing she had and could. My aunt, Vesna Radak, my sister, Gala Borovic, and my uncle, Srecko Borovic, for taking care of me as if I were their own. To Vida and Milivoj Milosevic for being an extra set of grandparents that one can only wish for. I remain grateful and indebted to my dear mentor and doctoral disser- tation chair, Kathryn Montgomery, for her warm, uplifting, and inspiring guidance. Knowing that I could rely on her at any time has been priceless. To Professor Patricia Aufderheide, whose intellect, work ethic, and persever- ance were exemplary to me, and who never hesitated to prioritize my interests to help me arrive where I needed to be. To Professor Laura DeNardis, for being a true positive force, not just in my life, but in the lives of many PhD students in my program; and for taking a chance on me; and especially for teaching me a life-long lesson of quieting down self-criticism at a point when it is no longer helpful. To Professor Sonia Livingstone, who gener- ously helped me in the research process and assisted in guiding my career at a crucial point in time.