Help keep flame wars under control

 Since my childhood, the Internet was slowly creeping into humans’ lives and now has become a crucial part of everyday routine. The course I have decided to study promotes using various web resources not only to get some knowledge but to share it as well. I’m using Telegram, YouTube, Instagram, and other platforms and sometimes you should do a lot of patient work not to start a conflict. I have decided to write about the seventh “Commandment”, helping to keep flame wars under control and what do I think about it.

Unfortunately, my home country is facing extremely difficult days due to “friends from the east”. Wars on the Internet between Ukrainians and fans of a mad dictator have appeared long ago, somewhere around 2014 or even earlier. Tons of “bots” with prepared in advance texts usually flicker under YouTube videos of national TV channels or Ukrainian bloggers’ channels, who shed light on some political things with the strict pro-Ukrainian position. But recently, a year before the full-scale russian-Ukrainian war I noticed a great increase in the numbers of such individuals. It is useless to somehow try to convince them of their wrong beliefs, and the only way to reduce their quantity is simple: just complain about them and do not continue any dialog with them. Luckily some services usually do restrict their activity, and this trend is becoming more and more popular today. Funny is the fact, that sometimes the aggressor's methods of conducting an information war turn into not even the owner company taking away the business from country-exile, but just naming it as an extremist platform and banning it. For example, recently Facebook and Twitter were restricted and at the time I’m writing this blog, Instagram influencers from second North Korea can now become homeless.

In general, this Shea’s “rule” about trying to calm down the opposing sides is the thing that I always try to do, as well as not starting any arguments on forums or in comments. We should have good manners everywhere, despite the fact of who is chatting with us. The best way to escape such clashes is to mute or ban this person. Usually, there are admins, that are monitoring the situation in chats and keeping everything in peace. From my own experience, they are doing a great job indeed. When the war started, all authorized or not newsgroups had comments under each post for people to discuss their opinion. After a couple of hours, on February 24 in the morning I saw that nearly every group has removed the option to comment on the post. This was the best tactical decision, to stop the informational war that I have ever experienced. And even if there is such a possibility to comment, admins have already banned permanently all fake posters and “peacemakers”.

To conclude, I consider all points that Virginia Shea has written in her book as the default behavior in the Net. No one will be able to sue you if you neglect them slightly, but everybody wants to be treated with good manners and respect.