Twitter mobs are easy to join and risk-free — but they're also constitutional threats. And unlike physical mobs, they're harder to protect against.
Mobs are as old as settled humanity. From the Roman mob, to the Blues and Greens of Constantinople, to the London mobs that provided the “riot” part of the 18th century British governance model (“aristocracy tempered by rioting” in one famous description). and on to the present day, mobs have formed and left wreckage behind.
People enjoy forming mobs. Mobs allow people to do things they’d be afraid to do on their own, to steal, to hurt and kill, to burn and destroy — and also to feel set free from the bonds of civil society, to experience a kind of atavistic catharsis, a feeling of power and a solidarity with their fellow rioters, in a way that’s otherwise difficult to achieve, especially without suffering serious consequences.
Because people like to form mobs, and because mobs can be dangerous and destructive, societies have developed various techniques to temper them, ranging from customs like the rule of law and due process, to democratic representation, to the wide boulevards in Haussmann’s Paris, which were designed to make it easier to give the mob a whiff of grapeshot at need.
But now there’s a new kind of mob, an online mob. And judging by the events of the past week, this new mob is becoming a more frequent problem. Part of that is because it’s easier (and safer) to be part of an online mob than one in the real world.
Joining a real mob requires you to leave your house, go somewhere else, and experience risks and discomforts. Joining an online mob can be done from an easy chair at home. As John Hayward writes:
Mob action has always been a reliable means of obtaining emotional catharsis and validation. Thanks to Twitter and Facebook, mob action no longer requires any significant investment of time or physical energy. In essence, mobs have been subsidized, so we're getting more of them.
It does seem that way. Social media, and in particular Twitter, seem almost intentionally designed to facilitate online mobbing. It’s easy to share sentiments, easy to create a hashtag that others will rally to, and easy to go after the reputations, livelihoods — and sometimes even lives — of people that you probably only know as pixels on a screen anyway.
On Facebook, people’s behavior is at least somewhat limited by its focus on “friend” circles, and by the fact that Facebook humanizes people somewhat. Twitter is more wide open, and with its short messages and limited personal information, makes dehumanizing the objects of mob action easier.
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And it’s not just technology. There was a time, not too long ago, when it was seen as dirty pool to go after someone’ s job — much less their spouse or children’s jobs — over political differences. That attitude seems to have largely disappeared, at least among the media and political types who tend to form today’s online mobs. And, as Derek Hunter notes in his new book, Outrage, Inc., there is a whole “anger industry” devoted to ginning up destructive mobs for political reasons.
Mobs usually fade away when it becomes clear that there’s a price to be paid. Online mobs feel safe, but unlike a real mob, each member is actually identifiable. (Even people with fake Twitter handles are pretty easy to identify, if anyone really wants to, and doubly so if the government, or litigants armed with subpoenas, want to.)
Both federal and state laws already on the books create civil and criminal penalties for organizing (the term here is “conspiring”) to deprive people of their constitutional rights, rights that include the right to have and announce political opinions others may disapprove of. So far, these laws have seen little application to online mobs. I wonder, though if that might change. If online mobbing looks like enough of a problem, I’d expect it to.
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