Toxic Fandom May Invade Your Privacy Leveraging the Power of Social Media

-- By YingLiu - 20 Nov 2020

Let each fan has a voice of their own could be a way to showcase participatory and democratic culture. But the Web 2.0 fandom gradually drifted away from that vision. Giving people a sense of community is great, but social media locks fans in a self-reinforcing cycle where breeds groupthink and polarization. Fandom turns toxic:  fans who are inundated with information that aligns with their own beliefs will not tolerate any dissent and social networking sites provide them with a handy weapon to suppress such rebellious voice: doxing.  

From Liszt Fever to Facebook Fan Groups

Idolatry is not a new phenomenon. Back in the 19th Century, Heinrich Heine created the term "lisztomania" to describe woman's then prevailing fervor for Franz Liszt. After the Technological Revolution, more and more stars, or idols, were born in Hollywood, Rolling Stones Records and the NBA. The corresponding fandom flourished -- individual fans started to ally with those who had a shared obsession to form a fan community.

The penetration of social media into people’s daily life further promoted the communication between fans, and the traditional fan clubs evolved into online taste groups Facebook, Twitter and Instagram offer fans a free space to trumpet their private fanaticism with the world and make it easier for them to connect and communicate with like-minded users transcending the geographical boundaries. As Henry Jenkins pointed out, this kind of fandom transformed the personal reaction into social reaction.  

It Turns Sour Soon

An Echo Chamber for Like-Minded Fans

We see group polarization in the presidential election, and fandom is also an extreme manifestation of this tendency. What caused it? Twitter users may assume they have full control over what appears on their timeline since they can decide who to follow, but the reality is that their online behavior is manipulated by algorithms. Once a fan’s interest in a celebrity is detected by Twitter, it starts to supply the fan with personalized recommendations and newsfeeds that are specifically tailored to his own interests and prejudices. Driven by both self-sorting and algorithms, consequently, all tweets on his timeline are of nearly homogeneous sentiments, that is, repetitive expression of fanatical love and support for that celebrity.   

But there exist outsiders. People who don’t belong to such fandom may post their comments and reviews of the celebrity and his works on the web, sometimes in a negative tone. When fans are surrounded by a large group of people who agree with them, they become overly sensitive to dissent. Once they spot someone who’d dared to scorn their “king” or “queen” with insufficient praise, they spare no efforts to silence and destroy dissenting voices like what Marxists do.

Social Media and Collective Action Make Doxing Easier Than Ever

Social media lends a helping hand to fans again. For one thing, everyone inevitably leaves piecemeal personal information on the Web either by actively opening an SNS account or passively being mentioned in others’ posts, and such information furnishes a database for doxing. For another thing, doxing used to be done mostly on underground sites with limited forum members, but social media has made it possible to broadcast information to a massive audience instantly, which better serves the public humiliation purpose of doxing. Meanwhile, fandom can use its inherent collective power. An individual fan is not capable of much beyond some light cyber-bullying; while collectively, fandom’s power can be overwhelming and immense.

If Fans’ Infatuation Lasts, Who Can Stop the Chaos Caused by Such Fave?

Simply accusing or mocking these fanatics for their immaturity and irrationality will not solve this toxic kind of activism enforced by a small but vocal group. Idolatry and fandom will not extirpate in the near future, especially when a growing number of teenagers are dreaming about being a Key Opinion Leader on social media. In addition, a research surveyed more than 1,500 technologists and scholars showed that over 80% of the surveyed expect that the tone of online discourse will either stay the same or get worse in the next decade.

Private Information Policy Doesn’t Help, As Fans’ Anger Is Appeased by Social Media

When users can't alter the overall atmosphere of lack of civility across the Web, they may hope that the social media sites would take precautionary and remedial actions to shelter them from attack. To achieve this goal, social media sites should have a comprehensive privacy protection policy both in the sense that it will not track, use and reveal user data without consent; and in the sense that it can effectively prevent user privacy from being maliciously publicized by other users. 

Almost all internet companies failed on the first prong since user data is their dominant monetization source. What may look reassuring is that mainstream SNS sites adopted a “report-and-takedown” policy that users can request the site to remove a post if it involves their private information, but it is just a sugarcoated placebo. At the moment when one’s privacy is disseminated, this remedial measure is futile because it is impossible to force the audience to forget. In fact, internet companies are fully aware that user privacy is vulnerable to invasion but they will not step in before egregious harm occurs -- because hate and anger drive participation with the platform, and user participation can be translated into advertising revenue. 

The greater irony is that when being asked how would they react to Taylor Swift fan’s doxing posts, Instagram responded that it is adding posts containing the personal information of the two victims to a database that allows the company to automatically delete other attempts to post that information. Isn’t it more inherently risky when one’s personal information is uploaded to an SNS provider’s server? 

Arise, Ye Victims of Cyber-Revenge 

There is a more powerful and practical solution. Anyone who has closely followed the discussion on data mining and capitalism surveillance should realize that they could never pin their hope on entrepreneurs’ conscience in terms of digital privacy protection. They shall take the initiative and save themselves proactively. Staying away from social media is the most effective solution. But people may argue this is a compelled compromise of their freedom of choice and freedom of speech and they are not ready to quit that digital cocaine.  Yes, you do have the freedom to social media, but you cannot sit back and watch the troop of fans pulling the trigger on your privacy. It is time to review all of your digital footprints and remove or request the websites to remove anything that might enable crazy fans to trace your real identity. Once your personal information is cleared from the web domain, you may proceed to create pseudonymity for your internet profile, and you can start simply by selecting a false answer when Facebook asks which university did you attend. Next time you accidentally exasperate the loyal fans to someone, they will spend hours to identify a person who never exists in this world.

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