Mick Clifford: Social media is fuelling a culture where even grieving families face abuse

The abuse directed at grieving families after tragedy reflects a wider collapse in public discourse, fuelled by social media platforms

The funeral cortege for Joe Carthy, 15, one of the five teenagers who died in a motorway crash in Co Kildare last weekend.

Joe Carthy was 15. On the last day of his brief life he was involved in a terrible crime, or at least a venture that was criminal and ended with terrible consequences for an innocent family. And his own family. Just to state again, he was 15, physically, emotionally, developmentally and legally, a child.

He was the youngest of the five teenagers who were killed in the M9 crash in which a completely innocent family of four, including a seven-year-old boy, were badly injured. The primary and overwhelming sympathy in this tragedy must be extended to the innocent family whose lives have been shattered.

The occurrence of Joe Carthy’s death was posted on RIP.ie, the noticeboard for the vast majority of deaths in the state and beyond. Within hours the notice was removed. There had been, according to a report in the Irish Times, around 600 comments in the condolences space by that time. Some expressed genuine sympathy over the death of a child. Many others used the space reserved for condolences to hurl abuse and insults at a dead child and his bereaved family. Is that where we are now at as a society? Is it acceptable that some people be cast out beyond the basic compassion that has always heretofore been afforded to the recently bereaved?

Is it ok that a dead boy of 15 attracts the kind of comments that previously might, and only might, have been disseminated on the death of some kind of long-standing tyrant who was responsible for wholesale murder and degradation?

RIP.ie had notices for two of the other dead teens later in the week but the condolences space was closed. This is the treatment being meted out to the family and loved ones who are, whatever the circumstances of the deaths, grieving lost boys. Is everybody ok with this consignment of dead children and their families to a status that is beneath the reach of basic human compassion?

Three of the dead boys were Travellers but this kind of hatred and abuse goes way beyond prejudice against their community. 

This is the culture in which we now live, a culture that is tolerated by some on the basis of something called free speech

On July 7, the body of Jamey Carney, aged 43, was found in her home in Killarney. She had been brutally murdered. She was a mother of one, well-liked in her relatively new community, innocent by nature, and by all accounts a person of compassion. T he main suspect in her murder is a man from the Middle East with whom she was acquainted. On that basis, Carney’s Instagram account was flooded with abuse in the hours after the discovery of her body.

The spectre was so sickening that Taoiseach Micheál Martin described it in the Dáil as “filthy and horrific”. The suffering of her family had been “compounded and exacerbated”, he said, by the material posted online.

That is where we are at as a society. Most people don’t lower themselves into the gutter in this manner, but enough do and they are not ostracised as might have once been the case.

Anger everywhere

This societal acceptance of abuse and anger exists everywhere. Recently, in a nursing home, I saw a notice warning about the consequences of abusing staff. Who in Christ’s name would abuse staff who are engaged in the primal business of caring for people towards the end of their lives?

Look at your local sports club where you will most likely find notices about the importance of not abusing anybody and the consequences for doing so.

Turn on your TV where you will see the president of the United States denigrate female reporters in demeaning language for just doing their job.

All of this is going on in the real world but the elephant in the room facilitating, encouraging and feeding off the expression of the most extreme negative emotions is social media.

The role of the platforms in encouraging young boys and men, in particular, to engage in reckless or criminal behaviour has been well aired this week. Across the Atlantic, a major court case opened on Tuesday in which dozens of US states are suing Meta over allegations that the company designed features likely to lead to childhood addiction to social media.

These kind of responses to the wholly negative impact of how social media companies operate are at the sharpest end of the problem. But on another level there is no doubt that the influence of platforms on public discourse has been appalling.

In theory, social media is a hugely progressive development in the evolution of communication. It is designed in its most basic function to be the democratisation of debate and comment. In practice, the platforms became aware early on that anger, polarisation and abuse all ensure greater engagement.

Since then, the companies have pushed back against any restrictions on the platforms and, crucially, responsibility for anything posted on them. Restrictions or moderation means less engagement, less money and that is all that matters.

You can bet your bottom dollar that most of the kind of people who spit bile at a bereaved family online wouldn’t ever dream of repeating the insults to their target in the real world. It just doesn’t happen.

Social media facilitates the darkest, most impulsive emotions, to be disseminated far and wide at a push of a button, incrementally chipping away at long accepted norms of discourse

The results are now manifest in how people react cruelly to public events but also how debate is conducted. Where once there might have been a disagreement on facts, now there is often a bile fest where anger leaps from the screen and more and more people tune in to make more money for the tech companies.

They are beyond the reach of national governments. This week TikTok refused an invitation to appear before an Oireachtas committee in the wake of the M9 crash. A catastrophic tragedy has shaken the whole country, yet TikTok can just shrug shoulders and say to the people’s representatives, “sorry, can’t help you with that.”

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Right now, in so many different ways, these tech companies are shaping the world. We just live it. Focused vigilance and self-regulation of the platforms would completely reshape the economic model that has yielded billions for these companies. In the USA, the current administration has no intention of curbing the power of social media because it can be used as a weapon.

Comically, a US Republican-led group accused the EU of “harassment” of tech companies through attempting to impose regulation. With friends like these, the masters of the universe will continue to prosper, marching on through the various forms of carnage they have wreaked.

There are straws in the wind suggesting that change is dropping slowly. It will take some time before anything positive can be expected to emerge. In the meantime we will just continue to live in a world increasingly shaped by a small group of people who are unanswerable for what they have caused.