The IT Nerd

Coke is an official Olympic sponsor. Thus you’d think that given the anti-gay hate being spouted by the Russians, Coke would be careful of how they present themselves in relation to this sensitive topic, given that they’ve gotten a significant amount of backlash by being a sponsor among other things related to their involvement in the Sochi Olympics.

Apparently not. Here’s what AMERICAblog discovered about a Coke social media tool:

The site, which permits Coke fans to enter their name (or a message) on a virtual can of Coke, bans the word “gay.” It does not, however, ban the word straight.

When you type in the word “gay,” here’s the messsage that Coke gives you:

“Oops. Let’s pretend you didn’t just type that.”

But when you use the word straight, no problem. I guess that Coke doesn’t want to upset the Russians or something. Try it and you’ll see for yourself. This bothered me so much that when my wife and I decided to order a pizza tonight, we both decided not to order a Coke product to go along with it.

See Coke? That’s how boycotts start. Thus you might want to rethink this and come to your senses. Quickly.

I once again find myself in the position of saying that there is something wrong with the way people conduct themselves on social media and that it has to change.

The incident that made me want to write this story started when former English footballer Stan Collymore became the subject of racist Tweets. In the interest of not offending anyone, I have not reprinted the Tweets in question. But if you scroll through his Twitter timeline, you’ll see lots of examples that he has posted and they are extremely offensive. All of these were a response to a comment that he made that Liverpool footballer Luis Suarez cheated during last Saturday’s football match against Aston Villa by diving (or simulation as it is called in football circles) to earn a penalty kick.

While many others jumped to the defense of Collymore, it was CNN talk show host and avid Twitter user Piers Morgan who really led the charge. Via Twitter, he called for the racial abuse to stop. As a result he then became a new target for the abuse. I guess that was too much for Morgan who then aggressively pushed for the police and Twitter to do something about this, and his efforts appear to have been successful:

CONFIRMED: Police investigating vile racist death threats to @StanCollymore – start panicking @BetsAndWagersDB @PhilippLad @AnonymousGooner

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) January 21, 2014

The Twitter users in question have all had their accounts suspended. And I suspect the users behind those accounts are getting legal advice as this sort of abuse in the UK is very illegal.

Here’s why I am writing this. This keeps happening and that is absolutely unacceptable. I wrote about this previously and it is clear that little has changed since I wrote that story in August of last year. I continue to be perplexed as to why people say and do things on social media that they not only would not do face to face, but they know is wrong. Most people who are the targets of this sort of abuse aren’t going to have a Piers Morgan jump in and defend them. Thus it is up to all of all of us to go after people who make racist, sexist, homophobic, or any other unacceptable remarks on social media. We all must make it clear that this sort of behavior is unacceptable anywhere, anyplace, at any time. We all must also make it clear that if this sort of behavior is found, it will be immediately and decisively confronted. Governments have a role in this as there need to be strong laws that are strictly enforced to act as a strong deterrent. Social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook also have a role to play in this. They too must  immediately and decisively confront this behavior. I say that because there have been suggestions that in the Collymore case, Twitter dragged its feet in terms of dealing with this. Here’s what Collymore had to say:

“I accuse Twitter directly of not doing enough to combat racist/homophobic /sexist hate messages, all of which are illegal in the UK.”

If that’s true, then Twitter must do a better job like its UK arm pledged to do, but clearly isn’t.

So, will 2014 be the year that we finally put an end to this sort of abuse on social media, or will it be the year of more of the same? Only we collectively can make that choice. Let us hope that we make the right choice.

Here’s something that should’t send a chill down your spine, but it likely will.

Filmmaker Jack Vale posted a video on YouTube called “social media experiment” where he combs through social media posts from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Foursquare to look up information on people nearby. He then approaches them and rattle off a list of details about their personal life, all to the shocked onlooker’s bewilderment. The point is to highlight to people just how much personal information they broadcast without really grasping it.

Here’s the video:

Now there’s two other videos that Mr. Vale posted. Here they are:

Hopefully these videos make you reconsider what you post on social media. 

I work up this morning and noted on The Toronto Star that two stories that are on the front page today that show that we as a society really need to change how we behave on social media. The first one relates to the story of Rehtaeh Parsons. She was a teen who as allegedly raped and had photographs taken during the rape circulated around cyberspace via social media. That led to her being cyberbullied which led in turn to her taking her own life. That in turn sparked outrage around the globe. Now hot on the heels of the Nova Scotia government enacting legislation to stop cyberbulling, two teen males have been charged in relation to this case:

The young men, both from the Halifax area, were arrested Thursday morning. Police later announced that both face charges of distributing child pornography. One is also charged with making child pornography. Their identities were not released because they were young offenders at the time of the allegations, police said.