“That’s not how the Internet works”

Over the weekend, I read some of the discussion that appeared under a news article about Ellen Pao’s resignation from Reddit. This discussion featured a number of viewpoints: some were outlining what changes they felt needed to be made to the site, and even to the wider Internet. Others contested this, stating that intervention was the problem, not the solution. But one comment stood out for me: “If you suggest regulating the Internet, then you don’t understand how the Internet works”.

It is likely that this comment refers to the dissipated infrastructure of the Internet, in which the sheer scale of numerous service providers, sites and users makes any kind of straightforward ‘regulation’ virtually impossible. But I would argue that this comment is problematic for several reasons.

Firstly, this image of the Internet as incomprehensibly vast, unknowable and uncontrollable is used as a way of shutting down conversation. “You don’t understand how this works” is a variant on “that’s stupid”, which acts as a discursive technique for undermining alternative viewpoints as being irrelevant and ignorant. It is also interesting that the denial of one person’s viewpoint here was not countered by any elaboration of what the reality of the situation might in fact be. It’s easy to say “no that’s wrong”, but much harder to say why.

Secondly, the Internet is and always has been regulated. This image of online space as innately free and unconstrained is a fabrication, a rose-tinted echo of a time in which Internet users were a tiny group of enthusiasts and military researchers. Today, we use an Internet that is controlled not only by numerous national and international laws, but also by the interests of corporations. Companies such as Facebook are arguably the very embodiment of regulation, in that they have a fine-grained capacity to control what is seen and shared within its confines. Equally, to say that ‘Twitter cannot be regulated’ is to ignore that Twitter is already intensely controlled through its own algorithms and corporate strategy. At every level, the Internet is a context for people making decisions about what it should do and how it should work. A multiplicity of minute regulations is not an absence of control, but rather a dissipated form of it.

Thirdly, undermining calls for change is a means for maintaining the status quo. The image of technology as wild and uncontrollable appeared throughout my PhD research, in which women were chastised for taking intimate photos (“the photos are bound to be shared, that’s just what happens”) or engaging in online debate (“if you don’t want to be trolled, don’t go there”). This kind of shrug at “the ways things are” is not just apathetic, it also acts to reinforce the problem by contesting that anything can be done about it. The comment about “how the Internet works” does the same thing — it meets a suggestion for change with a sneer. But it’s so easy to say that nothing can be done, and that’s “just how it is” — the harder job is to think around the obstructions and work out what *is* possible.

Lastly, how the Internet ‘works’ is not entirely outside of our comprehension or control. It is not some untamable force of nature, like the weather — it is the product of our collective effort and will. And this is ultimately the point I wish to make — a shrug and a denial acts to disempower all of us, by denying that we can have any influence. But not all regulation is the same. The regulation which that commenter denied was possible is not the only form of regulation that can be formulated to deal with online abuse. The social norms and expectations that govern our everyday lives are maintained and negotiated by all of us, and these can encompass online conduct as well as our behaviour in the office or at home. This sense in which the Internet is some kind of uncontrollable space is ludicrous when we consider the degree to which life is regulated through social consensus. Therefore the sentiment that regulation is simply not possible, because that’s “how the Internet works” is instead is a misunderstanding of how society itself (Internet included) functions.