Keyboard heroes need to be tamed

The Supreme People's Procuratorate has stressed strengthening people's right to privacy in the age of the internet.

Since 2019, procuratorates nationwide have approved the arrest of 168 suspects for slander, 12,410 suspects for tampering with people's personal information and 12 suspects for showing disrespect to heroes and martyrs.
Comprehensive measures are needed to address this problem, but existing legislation is not enough.

Apart from abuse, some online messages have racist and discriminatory overtones, or advocate violence and superstitions, all of which call for amending legislation to control them.

The amendment must make clear that freedom of speech has its limits, even in the virtual world. While exercising their basic rights, citizens must not violate the legal rights and interests of others. For example, in Germany it is criminal to praise the Nazis, while in many countries it is a crime to advocate militarism, extremism and terrorism. Similarly, it might be a good idea to draw redlines to ensure law and order in cyberspace.

Also, lower administrations should be empowered to fight illegal deeds. In developed countries, management companies of social media platforms are often given the responsibility of ridding their platforms of improper, illegal and criminal content. It is easier for the platforms than for government agencies to do this job.

Future legislation should also concentrate more on tracing the origin of verbal violence.

Not surprisingly those advocating online violence are called "keyboard heroes" as they find their courage in their anonymity.

However, such keyboard heroes must be found out and made to pay for their misdeeds before they incur more damages.