Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia fame and Andrea Weckerle of CiviliNation had an excellent op-ed in the WSJ right before the new year. In it, they call for a more civil online dialogue, making the important point that vicious online attacks can too often silence discussion rather than advance or broaden it. There is always room in a free society for vigorous dialogue and debate. But when one party is attacked–often, online, anonymously–into silence, we can lose the value of the conversation and disagreement.
Some will no doubt respond to Wales and Weckerle with the opinion that their way forward would result in a chilling of speech; change the law or mores online even a smidgeon, the argument would go, and the immediate and necessary result is Stalinism– an icicle where there used to be free speech. The argument goes that anything other than the status quo is censorship. Not true.
Too often, online attacks yield a kind of “life censorship,” in which people are afraid to go about their lives, attend class, go on dates, apply for jobs, participate in online discourse, because they have been victimized on the Internet. In the words of Wales and Weckerle, from the op-ed:
“The Internet is bringing about a revolution in human knowledge and communication, and we have an unprecedented opportunity to make the global conversation more reasonable and productive. But we can only do so if we prevent the worst among us from silencing the best among us with hostility and incivility.”
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