Lesson 2: Preventing and combating cyber violence

In the past 20 years, with the explosion of the Internet and social networking platforms, cyber violence (or "online bullying") has become increasingly complex with many serious consequences that have occurred in reality on a global scale.

Bài 2: Phòng, chống bạo lực mạng - bảo vệ quyền con người

With the explosion of the Internet and social networking platforms, cyber violence is becoming increasingly complicated...

Therefore, many countries have been making efforts to develop and promulgate legal documents and regulations to prevent and combat this problem. There are many different solutions but they can be divided into three main groups: legal solutions, technical solutions and social solutions. Simultaneous and reasonable application of these groups of solutions will be able to prevent cyber violence and protect human rights on the Internet.

Legal solutions

In the United States, although it is one of the three countries with the most cyber violence in the world, this country does not have a federal law directly regulating cyber violence, but each state has its own regulations.

To date, 49 out of 50 US states have enacted regulations on online harassment, including cyberbullying.

Washington state passed one of the first cyberbullying laws in 2004, which declared it a misdemeanor for a person to use electronic communications with “the intent to harass, threaten, torment, or embarrass any other person” using lewd, obscene, or other physically threatening language, or to repeatedly harass a person.

The Alaska Anti-Harassment Act adds electronic means as one of the ways harassment can harm a person's health.

In California, AB 86, passed on January 1, 2009, gives schools the power to suspend or expel students who engage in cyberbullying. The state’s Penal Code, which went into effect on January 1, 2011, makes it a crime to create a fake Facebook account or email account for the purpose of bullying someone.

In Australia, the Online Safety Act 2021 has established mechanisms to protect not only children but also adults from online violence, through the creation of platforms for complaints, and rules to remove harmful, bullying content from the internet.

Cyberbullying is also a criminal offence in the country and can be punished with between five and 10 years in prison. While the Australian Criminal Code does not specifically address cyberbullying, police can still use existing laws to prosecute this type of behaviour.

South Korea is the country with the most serious cyber violence in the world with a large number of neitizens, many of whom are ready to criticize anyone, at any time. The consequences are not only the loss of honor, dignity, mental health but also life.

Data from Statistics Korea shows that South Korea has the highest suicide rate among the 38 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), including many suicides due to cyberbullying. In recent years, many K-pop stars have taken their own lives because they could not bear the isolation and other cyberbullying.

Recently, in April 2023, Moonbin, 25 years old, a member of the boy band Astro, was also found dead at his home in Seoul after being a victim of cyber violence.

Therefore, Korea has enacted the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection (2001, amended in 2016) which prohibits the circulation on the Internet of “…information that defames others by publicly disclosing the truth, false information, and intentionally degrading the dignity of that person; Information that arouses fear or apprehension by repeatedly approaching others through codes, words, sounds, images, or moving images…”. The information as listed can be immediately removed by the authorities upon request of the victim.

The Korean Criminal Code does not specifically define cyberbullying, but authorities can use the Defamation Act to prosecute cyberbullying perpetrators, with a maximum fine of 10 million won or five years in prison.

In Japan, on June 13, 2022, the Japanese Parliament passed a bill to amend the Criminal Code, which stipulates that online insults can be punished with a maximum prison sentence of 1 year or a fine of up to 300,000 JPY.

This is a significant increase in the penalty for this behavior, as previously online insults could only be punished with a maximum of 30 days in detention and a fine of 10,000 JPY.

This change is expected to help effectively prevent the increasing cyber violence in Japan, especially after the suicide of an online TV star in early 2020 after being subjected to cyber violence for a long time.

Technical solutions

The responsibility for preventing cyber violence lies not only with law enforcement agencies in detecting and punishing it, but also with Internet service providers and companies that manage social networking platforms. These are the entities that have the ability to prevent and control cyber violence at the earliest stage, minimizing the consequences for victims. Effective measures that they can apply include:

Strengthening content censorship systems . In the face of the spread of online violence, in recent years, social networks have made many efforts in content censorship, the most typical of which is Facebook - the world's most popular social network.

Facebook has developed a set of “Community Standards” to detect violent and bullying content on its platform. Facebook has also applied Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology in moderation, thereby significantly increasing the efficiency, scope and speed of censorship compared to using human moderators.

According to a report by Meta (Facebook's owner), the rate of content related to bullying and harassment decreased from 76.7% to 67.8% on Facebook and from 87.4% to 84.3% on Instagram in the third quarter of 2022. This has shown the effectiveness and necessity of this solution.

Clear identification on social media makes it easier to identify those who commit cyberbullying and hold them accountable.

Clear identification on social networks . The solution to this problem is the mandatory method of identity verification (ID Verification) when registering an account on online platforms.

Specifically, the service provider will require users to authenticate their information when registering an account by providing their ID number, credit card number or other information of similar value. After completing the authentication, the account can be used to post content.

This method makes it easier to identify and hold cyberbullies accountable. It has been used in South Korea since 2004 and China since 2012, and has been shown to be effective in reducing negative online behavior.

Building a mechanism to report and remove cyber violence information more easily for customers . In addition to strict and proactive censorship mechanisms from providers, self-detection and self-protection of users against cyber violence are also essential in the fight against cyber violence.

Social media and Internet service providers need to facilitate this action by establishing a mechanism to collect information and handle reports of cyberviolent content from users on their platforms.

This mechanism is intended to help users themselves support service providers in detecting and removing cyber violence content. This mechanism must ensure that reporting requests will be processed quickly and accurately, both to detect and remove cyber violence content early, and to ensure that the reporting function is not abused to commit cyber violence.

In fact, on the Facebook platform, there have been cases where users had their accounts locked even though the content they posted was not violent because their accounts were "reported" by bad people.

Social solutions

Cyberbullying education . In 2010, the state of Massachusetts (USA) enacted a cyberbullying policy law, which required schools in the state to provide cyberbullying training and to issue guidelines for preventing cyberbullying. In 2017, the Italian Parliament passed Law No. 71/2017 on Cyberbullying, which sets out the responsibility of schools in educating and preventing cyberbullying.

Specifically, the school program must ensure that students are comprehensively educated about cyber violence, from manifestations, behaviors, consequences (for both victims and perpetrators), how to deal with it, etc.

For other groups in society, education can be carried out through propaganda on mass media such as television programs, reports, and communication campaigns on social networking platforms.

Support victims of cyberbullying . Cyberbullying causes serious mental damage to victims, especially adolescents. It can lead to anxiety disorders, depression, self-harm and even suicide.

Victims are often severely traumatized, feel scared, sad, angry, and lose self-confidence after being bullied online. In some cases, victims even commit suicide because they cannot bear the pressure.

This happens not only to celebrities as mentioned above but also to ordinary people. Typically in 2023, a 16-year-old boy in the US hanged himself in the garage while his family was sleeping due to being bullied online, having to endure harassing and humiliating messages from his classmates.

Therefore, there is a need for solutions to help victims of cyber violence heal their psychological trauma and return to life. The state and society need to invest more resources in the psychotherapy industry, thereby helping to develop more effective psychological treatments for victims of cyber violence.

In addition, it is necessary to establish specialized counseling and psychological therapy rooms at local medical facilities and schools to help victims of cyber violence easily get help when needed.

Cyber violence is a difficult social problem to deal with, but it is not impossible to prevent. To prevent and deal with cyber violence, many synchronous solutions need to be applied simultaneously.

Legally, there must be strict and stringent legal regulations to punish and deter those who commit cyber violence.

Technically, advanced technical measures need to be taken to eliminate and prevent the spread of this malicious content in cyberspace.

On the social side, it is necessary to build mechanisms to help and support victims of cyber violence to recover and return to normal life.

** Lecturer, University of Law - Vietnam National University, Hanoi

REFERENCES

Nguyen Thi Cham, Giang Phuong Thao, Bui Thi Viet Anh, Laws of Some Countries Regarding Verbal Violence on Social Networks and Reference Value for Vietnam, Journal of Procuracy Science, No. 03-2020.
Pamela Tozzo, Oriana Cuman, Eleonora Moratto, and Luciana Caenazzo, Family and Educational Strategies for Cyberbullying Prevention: A Systematic Review, Int J Environ Res Public Health, published online August 22, 2022.
Patrisha G. Ortigas, Iftikhar Alam Khan, Abdul Basit, Usman Ahmad, “ID verification to control cyberbullying: Juxtaposing the need and promise, with users' willingness,” Journal of Advances in Humanities and Social Sciences JAHSS2021, 7(3): 99-106, p. 101.c
https://www.indiatimes.com/technology/news/hate-speech-on-facebook-instagram-down-585594.html

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