The Dark Side?

The Dark Side?

There is a flipside to everything.

It’s too easy to wear rose tinted glasses and assume that all blog posts reflect a consistently egalitarian, supportive and optimistic worldview. Scandals, rumours, extremist views, backstabbing – all these and more have appeared on blogs, and sadly will continue to.

One email I received from a writer explained that an article they had written had been copied and pasted into a blog and given an excessively unpleasant review: “It wasn’t even handed on any level, just bitter and nasty.” There is no doubt that copyright is an issue on the web, as the UK Copyright Service acknowledges in their guidelines for online protection. Services such as Copyscape are emerging to try to deal with the issue and to protect original work on the web. 

For several years now there has been ongoing debate across the media, (followed up in blogs) relating to blog regulation to avoid abuse this has been even more evident with the rise of so called  'trolling'. This weekend a high profile group of mumsnet bloggers (who are one of the largest and most significant groups of bloggers) discussed this issue as part of a social media conference . 

In terms of  how to deal with these issues even as far back as 2007 The Guardian reported: “Opinion (was) divided over code of conduct meant to rid postings of offensive and abusive comments” This topic invariably leads to led to widespread discussion of blog freedom v. censorship.

There are, and probably will continue to be stories circulating about people who have felt the ‘darker side’ of blogging. Issues, relating to this topic could fill several lectures. In simple terms anyone using the Internet should be aware of the potential for this kind of behaviour.