Social media managers need to stand up and manage
Welcome to country addresses during ANZAC Day ceremonies brought a lot of online hate this past weekend, and many social media managers simply let the comments go unchecked.
Naomi Brooker, founder and CEO of SUADA, asks where the line lies between freedom of speech and unsafe online communities.
What does it take for social media managers to actually manage the community of an account – and where is the line between freedom of speech, social media engagement and a failure to create a safe online community?
I have been pondering this question over and over since a Welcome to Country was booed in the middle of an ANZAC Day ceremony on Friday. There was an onslaught of media commentary exploring and unpicking the rationales of neo-Nazis, which were then validated by an onslaught of everyday Australians on the social media posts of even the most left-leaning media outlets.
Excruciating, deplorable language, archaic racist attacks and a fundamental misunderstanding of what a Welcome to Country is all about.
This was a copy-paste experience of social media engagement surrounding 26 January and the Voice to Parliament, and arguably any content relating to Indigenous peoples, history, news or events. And, much like these occasions, comments were left unmonitored – they were left unremoved, without consequence or – as one would hope – management.
It’s a challenging environment, Naomi, that’s for sure. As someone who moderates and trains moderators in a number of the spaces you’ve likely visited, I can confidently say that resourcing is one of the biggest constraints. We may see anywhere from 100-300 comments on an average post, while a post like the one you mention above about a Welcome to Country at an Anzac Day ceremony will receive 1500-2000 comments in the first few hours of being published. It’s never the first call to shut down comments, you’re right about wanting to keep open the lines of communication for the core audiences of those pages, but misinformation, disinformation and bigotry derail those conversations rapidly. I also would love to see the platforms take on a larger role in addressing cultural context within the comment sections so less of the Australia-specific racism or bigotry is visible to audiences before the moderators reach it. Solid piece, I agree with your ending “doing nothing is not being neutral, it’s complicit”, and I love the mission you have behind SUADA. It feels aligned with a lot of the work we do at Quiip, and some projects I’ve been discussing with Luke at IndigenousX. I also wrote a piece last year on some lessons from moderating during the Voice Referendum in 2023 you may find interesting. If you’d ever like to connect on something, it’d be great to chat.
Solution.
If you are a publisher-of-sort, simply don’t include open comment sections. If someone is so steamed up to be commenting abhorrently, then allow them to directly e-mail to the publisher who can decided what is allowed and what isn’t.