Social media: A boon or a bane

Uncontrolled and excessive power in the hands of an unaware is a dangerous thing; social media networks give a person such a power. What started as platforms to exchange ideas and news, to share cherished memories with family and friends, are turning into rumor factories giving a rise to the culture of invasion of privacy, unfair judgments, hatred, harassment or similar issues stained with shades of legal wrongdoings.
A few days ago, a Saudi court sentenced a Twitterati to three months in jail and 80 lashes. The basis of the trial was defamation caused by a series of tweets and Facebook updates, the user published to attack a female singer accusing her of committing morally reprehensible behavior. The same singer who won the case announced filing three more cases against some other social media users.
In another incident few weeks ago, a Saudi female activist calling for lifting the ban on women driving — the never ending debate in the Kingdom — tweeted her journey to a police station to file complaints against a number of Twitter users who attacked her for her choices. Even government agencies are choosing the legal path to deal with social media problems. The Ministry of Justice is taking a number of Saudi lawyers to court over a number of tweets the ministry sees as derogatory to the Saudi judicial system.
The list goes on and not only in the Kingdom. In Kuwait, a writer has been detained and investigated for tweets the government interpreted as contemptible to the judicial system. In France, a group of Jewish students filed a case against a number of Twitter users for publishing “anti-Semitic” comments. In the UK, “social media and law” is a hot topic. There were many incidents where details or names of some cases protected by secrecy under the law were released to the public causing uproar and fierce confrontation between law experts and freedom of speech enthusiasts.
Undoubtedly, there is an apparent tension between law and social media networks. The way news traveled in the past has changed. It was limited to professional news producers who followed a code of conduct that dictated what should be published or otherwise. Everyone working in the media must have been, at least once, exposed to certain legal guidelines governing his or her work. In the modern social media platforms, these guidelines do not only go blurry, they are totally wiped out.
A study conducted by a UK-based law firm in 2011 had found that 52 percent of the 2,000 active users respondents it surveyed did not believe that their tweets could have any legal consequences, the percentage rise even higher, to 65 percent, when it came to respondents between 18-24 years. Obviously, social media users are taking it very lightly; legal repercussions are not on their minds.
For that, taking a side in the ongoing debate between those calling for a tighter control on what can or cannot be published on these media platforms and those defending the freedom of speech is a bit tricky. It is neither black nor white; there is a shade of grey. To cut a sharp judgment if a published piece of information, on one of the social media platforms, falls within the capacity of freedom of speech, or arrogantly wander to the territories of the private and personal, one needs to weight different factors of culture, political system, law, customs etc., before making such a judgment. A lot of people, of different backgrounds, may agree that a certain behavior is totally unacceptable, take altering photos to defame a celebrity as an example, but there are other incidents in which people will be divided and undecided.
A couple of years ago, a prominent Saudi blogger and Twitter user published the private phone number of a well known neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) trainer because he, the blogger, was annoyed by the series of advertisement SMSs he was receiving to promote the NLP trainer’s courses. He thought that publishing the trainer’s contact details was a suitable punishment the trainer should endure for “annoying” people with his SMS advertisements. Where are you going to stand in a situation like this? As there were people who welcomed the idea and started harassing the trainer, there were others who thought that what the blogger did was nothing but a horrible invasion of the trainer’s privacy.
The hope lays in awareness. After all, the social media platforms are only tools, virtual rooms where people can talk and exchange information, the attempt to harm or cross the line of privacy is a behavior that better be curbed through awareness. Enforcing laws and guidelines are crucial to save the rights of those abused or disgraced on these platforms, but it won’t stop the phenomenon itself, however, people who appreciate and understand the high values of respecting privacy and honesty can.