Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim
It is increasingly taking action against hate comments
Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim hopes for the help of her community in the fight against net haters.
© imago images / teutopress
Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim has to deal with many hateful comments in the corona pandemic. The journalist now wants to take action against this.
Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim (33) has declared war on hateful comments online. In a YouTube video Under the title “We have to talk”, the science journalist has presented regulations that are to apply from now on in the comment columns of her “maiLab” channel. Because: The hatred has increased proportionally to the growing reach of their science channel.
Together with her team, she has been racking her brains over the past few weeks about how to deal with the comments in the future. “Up until now we had hardly deleted or blocked at all, and we’ve done really well with that over the past four years.” But their community approached them and asked them to take action more, as there was sometimes a real “shitshow” in the comments of their science channel. A respectful, content-related discussion is no longer possible.
Guidelines for a good discussion environment
That’s why the team thought about some community rules. You want to continue to use deletion and blocking sparingly. In principle, however, both are possible, since the channel owner can invoke his “domiciliary right” and take action against unwanted users without violating the right to freedom of expression. The science editors in the team only have limited time for community management, so they want to rely on the help of the users.
On the one hand, they can report comments or spam so that they can be deleted. Comments that are not classic no-gos could also be reported to the team if they are primarily intended to be offensive. The dissemination of false information, on the other hand, is not intended to be countered by deleting it, but by moderating and presenting facts.
Some users already participated in these corrections, which the team “really touches”, according to Nguyen-Kim. With this “educational superspreading event”, the idea behind the channel was exactly fulfilled. When it comes to tone, “the reasonable majority” must remain objective and respectful and not engage in the style of hateful comments. And the science journalist comes up with a third measure as a “secret weapon” against haters: Ignoring is sometimes the only thing that makes sense. “Some comments discredit themselves through their own bananism. Resist the impulse to type a quick-witted answer!” If you don’t pay attention to the comments, they wouldn’t have any influence either.