Now everyone is running for cover. The victims, the authorities, the privacy guarantors, the correct intellectuals and the well-meaning. Only a few subscribers to so-called sexist sites downplayed it by saying it was a goliardic thing and that basically “it has always been done.” That the human soul in the male sense has ancient anthropological patterns, or Freud would say, of the outdated as primitive unconscious, is absolutely true. And it is the truth part of the feminist view, which, however, even in this matter, swerves ideologically and does not understand the cultural focus. Just to be clear and avoid unnecessary misunderstandings, of course I also join in a firm condemnation and a call for criminal measures.
However, the issue of the matter is once again the medium, the structure, the logic, the language of the Internet. A foreign server but an Italian owner, we are talking about the Phica.eu (the pronunciation is loose but obvious) platform, i.e., images of even public women put there without their knowledge and at the mercy of unpleasant urges and comments. About 40,000 members, almost a full stadium in a major city. The violations are obvious: from privacy to revenge porn, and apparently also extortion, because they were asking for money to delete photos or memberships. I repeat: those who have to do their job, starting with the postal police and ending with political institutions, do it.
But the problem is not the rules after, but the rules before. How could this happen? And there is not only the case of the platform being pronounced like the words found in school bathrooms, but also that other Facebook masterpiece titled, somewhat guasconically in sheepish sauce, My Wife. I mean, why wasn’t action taken sooner? Did it take the VIPs complaining or denouncing? I respect everyone, but I care not only about the very important people, but about the People all.
How to protect people from Internet violence: that is the great issue of our time. And that violence is in the planetary absence of functioning preventive rules. From fake news to the deep web, from pedophilia to weapons to sects. Let’s face it: on the web you can find anything and you can do anything. Without identity, without getting caught, without paying in terms of penalties or paying little.
The recipe is not there, but the blah blah of talks and conferences does not correspond to an adequate measure in reality. Everyone is dealing with it seriously, actually, even at the level of international police cooperation. Policy tries to give broad principles, but no one can assure me today that tomorrow I will not be ethically violated in some deviltry of an increasingly obsessive, ubiquitous, and out-of-control virtual.
The article The case of sexist sites comes from TheNewyorker.
