By Eliakim Willner
Eliakim Willner is a computer professional with deep experience in issues relating to the benefits and dangers of the Internet. He is also author of “Nesivos Olam – Nesiv HaTorah: An Appreciation of Torah Study”, a translation with commentary of a work by the Maharal of Prague, published by Artscroll/Mesorah.
“Hidden” in Plain Sight
The Internet and its dangers are getting renewed attention from the Chareidi world, as we try to grapple with ways of protecting our children – and adults – from the corrosive effects of the worst of the Internet while not impeding legitimate and often necessary usage of benign Internet sites.
I think therefore that the time is ripe for us to focus on what I will call the “hidden” dangers of the Internet. Truthfully, these websites are far from “hidden” – most frum Jews who use the Internet are aware of them and probably patronize them to some extent. Yet they are “hidden” in the sense that most people unthinkingly put them in the benign category, while, they are perhaps more dangerous to anshei shlomeinu than sites purveying shmutz, which most of us would never dream of visiting anyway.
I am referring to the Jewish “blogs” – websites with frum-sounding names (containing Yeshivishe or Yiddish words), run by supposedly frum people that supposedly report news of interest to the frum community. Most people naively feel right at home patronizing a site like that. After all, it is run by people “like us”! What could possibly go wrong? I will tell you what could and does go wrong.
For the uninitiated, here is how these sites work: the site management collects news stories from other websites, or in some cases from amateur “reporters”, and publishes them as “articles”. Anyone can access and read those articles – and moreover, anyone can post a “comment” on an article, and that comment is then, at the discretion of the site’s managers, made available to everyone reading the article. Others can then respond to already-posted comments and a dialogue ensues.
In theory such websites can be useful, and indeed to some extent these websites do serve a productive function; they are supreme when it comes to getting the word out quickly about a kashrus problem, a risk to the community, a levaya, r’l, and so on. But let me be blunt: the way these websites are currently run, they are hotbeds of every kind of shmiras haloshon problem described in sefer Chofetz Chaim, they are rampant with apikorsus, with denigration of gedolei yisroel and with laitzonus. They provide a platform that gives the lowest elements of our community equal-footing access to the hearts and minds of every member of our community.
Because these blogs operate under the guise of frumkeit people mistakenly believe that they are safe not only for themselves but also for their impressionable children. But do we really want our children reading remarks that ridicule gedolim for bringing to light a heretofore unknown halachic problem, or that poke fun at a legitimate chumra, or that publicize crimes supposedly committed by members of the frum community – with or without naming names?
Do we have any idea how much permanent damage this causes to the hashkofos of ourselves and our family members, especially when the exposure is prolonged? What was formerly unthinkable is now thinkable; what was formerly unspeakable is now speakable, what was sacrosanct is now open season for laitzonus, and doubts and temptations that might have rested dormant beneath the level of consciousness, especially in weaker individuals, will have come alive and raised their ugly faces to torment them and possibly cause them to go astray, chas vesholom.
I do not have statistics but I believe that it quite plausible that while we are busy locking the door to a set of shmutz-related Internet dangers that primarily affect the weak and the vulnerable – yes, that precaution is indeed necessary and praiseworthy – we are ignoring the elephant in the room; these blogs that insidiously affect almost everyone.
Now, you may ask, “I have a highly recommended filter on my computer, that is supposed to block everything that is ‘bad’. Surely if these sites were as dangerous as you say, my filter would block them, right?”
Wrong! In fact, not only do most of the filters fail to block most of those sites, some of the filters actually advertise on those sites! Some of those sites piously publish articles extolling the virtues of the filters! The fox is guarding the henhouse!
How did this sorry state of affairs come to pass?
Money!
Money is the root of all evil, at least when it comes to the Jewish blogs. The blogs exist to make money, and they do that by selling advertising on their sites, and by publishing “feature” articles that are really ads in disguise – for a fee. As with newspapers, ad fees are a function of readership – the more people that visit a site, the more it can charge for ads. This measure is called “eyeballs” in the trade. To keep a for-profit blog in the black (and the Jewish blogs we are talking about are all for-profit) it is crucial to get and keep the “eyeballs” number as high as possible.
Now, it is an unfortunate fact of life that many people, even, unfortunately, in our community, are drawn to “juicy” stories, to sensationalism and to controversy. It is therefore hard for a blog owner, in a quest for more eyeballs, to resist the temptation to pander to those tastes, even if, in doing so, various serious halachos are violated. Perhaps some of the blog owners soothe their consciences by telling themselves that they have “standards” – red lines that they will not cross. Perhaps that is even the case. But that is small comfort if the red lines are drawn so far off-field that much of what does pass muster is unacceptable by halachic standards – as is in fact the case.
For a variety of reasons I am not naming any of these sites, nor am I going to quote from them verbatim. But here are a couple of typical examples of their “all-for-the-eyeballs” tactics.
A tiny group of frum Jews makes it a practice to demonstrate against the Jewish state and to align itself with various unsavory sonei Yisroel. Is this objectively newsworthy? Considering that the impact of their actions is zero, and that they have been doing the exact same thing for years, the answer is “no”. Yet this kind of article is a staple on the blogs. Why? Because many readers who like to comment on the articles invariably are incensed, and say so, others disagree and say so, and arguments, many of them quite hostile, develop, and that draws a crowd of readers. And it is obvious that the article was couched in such a way as to maximize the negative reaction, draw out the commenters, and foment the controversy.
It does not require a halachic expert to determine that these discussions contain numerous shmiras haloshon violations – which apply to those reading the discussions as well as to those posting in them – yet they make for titillating reading and people are drawn in. To the blog owner, the ensuing eyeballs help him keep the prices of his ads up and thus he is motivated to post articles like these and to rationalize the michshol, and his own halachic violations, away.
Another example: A group of Jews who consider shaitlach to be prohibited sponsors a shaitel burning event to encourage their followers to get rid of them. Is this an inherently “bad” thing? No, it is not, because there is a sound basis in halacha for not wearing shaitlach and if that is their shittah, such an event is a legitimate means of making their point.
Is this newsworthy? Perhaps a case can be made for a “yes” answer, but the blogs glory in events like this, and write about them not as dispassionate news, but as if they were the height of primitive fanaticism – again to bring the negative commenters out of the woodwork, encourage remarks decrying chumros in general and again, to foment controversy. And again the motive is “eyeballs” – i.e. making more money.
An alleged “cult” takes refuge in a foreign country and its leaders are accused of terrible things. A person once regarded as a charismatic religious leader is charged with committing unspeakable acts. Whether or not these charges are true, should stories like this be publicly disseminated, let alone become fodder for public comment?
What’s In a Name?
Just who are the people commenting on articles like this, anyway? Unfortunately, we do not know who they are because most of the blogs allow people to make up pseudonyms for themselves and most of the comments are published anonymously – and even when real-sounding names are used, there is no way to tell if the name is genuine, or if someone is using another person’s name, or a fictional name.
And herein lies one of the biggest problems of the blogs, because many readers naively believe that since the blog is intended for frum people, the commenters are fellow-frum people like themselves. This gives credence to what they write – after all, if I am reading a comment by a person I suppose is frum on a blog I suppose is frum, then it must be ok for a frum person to think this, or even to say this.
Unfortunately this is often not the case. It is an unfortunate fact that many of the people commenting anonymously are the dregs of Jewish society – drawn from the small but vocal community of embittered formerly-frum, who delight in casting everything frum in a negative light, as a means of self-justifying their abandonment of Torah and mitzvos. Others are misfits who evoke nothing but pity in real life, but who find a voice and garner attention for themselves by saying outrageous things anonymously on a blog. Or they may be closet apikorsim who wouldn’t dare to express their heresies under their own name for fear of being ostracized, but who do so with impunity under a pseudonym.
Yet we, our spouses, our children, are lulled into thinking that the views expressed by these people are acceptable because, after all, they appear on a “frum” blog. And it is easy to believe that someone who goes by the name “Bubby” is a heimishe Yiddishe bubbe, or that someone who calls himself “Gadol BaTorah” must at least be able to learn a bit, but actually Bubby is more likely to be a cynical 19 year old boy on the fringe, and Gadol is more likely to be someone who has issues with ikrei emunah.
It gets worse. Some of the less scrupulous blog owners not only post provocative articles, they actually hire people to post provocative comments, under the guise of regular users, in order to further stoke the fires of controversy and, of course, to further their eyeballs-quest. Since anonymity is permitted, no one is the wiser.
The Decline of Decency
There is another problem with anonymous discussion that is endemic to all blogs, not just Jewish ones, and that is that civility tends to go out the window when a “discussion” about a controversial topic is in writing, not face-to-face, and especially when the correspondents are hiding behind pseudonyms. Sarcasm, derision, ad hominem attacks and downright insults are tossed about with abandon by people who wouldn’t dream of engaging in these tactics in real-life. In theory, blog owners “moderate” the discussions and can control the viciousness, but they often do not – again, because they believe that “street-fighting” attracts a larger audience, and their revenue is a function of audience size.
Do we really want to inure ourselves and our children to that kind of gutter behavior? Shouldn’t our standards be higher than those of the non-Jewish electronic “street”?
Power Corrupts
Unfortunately, the people who run the blogs are accountable to no one but themselves and can do what they want with impunity. This leads to abuses that go beyond the ones described above.
For example, some of the blogs favor certain frum politicians and disfavor others, to the ludicrous point of never reporting anything that might be construed as negative about the ones they favor, and finding every excuse to say something negative about the ones they don’t. Aside from the shmiras haloshon aspect of beating up on a yid in public, what motivates this blatant favoritism – which does a disservice to the blog’s readers, who may actually believe that they are getting objective news? Is money changing hands? It’s a reasonable question but unfortunately, because of the lack of accountability, no one knows.
Some blog owners abuse their power by engaging in public shaming. They have been known to take a dislike to some commenters and to publicly “out” them by publishing their identifies for all to see. Now, I am a strong opponent of anonymity in the first place but if a reader is given to expect that he has it, there is absolutely no justification for publishing his identity.
If the blog owner happens not to like someone’s comments, he can and often does, arbitrarily delete them without posting them publicly, giving the lie to the implied claim of an “open” forum. Halevai that this would be the worst sin of these blogs, but I mention it as yet another illustration of the basic underlying problem: An unvetted and unregulated group of people who are strongly profit-motivated and oblivious to the negative halachic implications of what they are doing.
What Can Be Done?
Clearly, we have a serious set of problems here, and now, when the tzibur is redoubling its efforts to protect itself from the dangers of the Internet, is the time to deal with it. And we CAN deal with it. Here are some suggestions to help bring the blogs around to cleaning up their act.
1) Insist that until these blogs shape up (more on that soon) they are blacklisted by ALL the filter programs, and that filter programs that do not comply will not be on the “approved” list.
2) Ban the practice of the filter programs advertising on these blogs under pain of being removed from the “approved” list. It is a blatant conflict of interest.
3) Approach the advertisers who place ads on these blogs and insist that they cease and desist until the blogs shape up. Names of advertisers who do not comply will be publicized.
4) I am astounded that there are respected Rabbonim who write articles for these blogs, seemingly oblivious to their dangers. Approach them and educate them and insist that they cease and desist until the blogs shape up.
5) There are numerous frum mosdos, including many Yeshivos, who shill their events on these blogs, both before the events, and with “photo essays” after the fact. Some of these mosdos are doubtless participating in the current Internet protection efforts! Approach them and educate them and insist that they also cease and desist until the blogs shape up.
Here are some of the things we ought to insist that the blogs do in order to restore the tzibur’s trust in them and to enable them to function without the restrictions above.
1) Establish a tzibur-run regulatory authority to monitor and supervise the blogs to assure no violations of halacha, either in the articles or in the comments. Give them the “teeth” to impose meaningful penalties, drawn from the list above, for “recidivist” blogs.
2) Create a detailed, written set up guidelines that blogs will have to abide by in order to be approved.
3) Create a mechanism for members of the tzibur to easily report infractions to the regulatory authority.
4) Allow only blog “members” to comment, require all members to be adults, and to be identified with full first and last name and city of residence, and verify all information provided by would-be members before authorizing them to comment.
5) Insist on financial transparency so that the regulatory authority knows who is paying the blog, and for what, to avoid the genaivas daas inherent in taking money under the table, for any reason.
6) Let it be known that if the current blogs don’t shape up, the tzibur will organize the formation of new blogs that will provide the same benefits as the current ones, but which will scrupulously follow the rules, so they and only they won’t be blacklisted.
I defer to the manhigei hatzibur who are organizing the current Internet initiative, and to the gedolim they rely on for advice; this article is intended to draw attention to what I believe to be a serious problem and to suggest a path toward a solution. I leave the ultimate solution in their hands but I volunteer to serve on the tzibur-run regulatory authority to keep the blogs in check, and to assist in whatever other way I can.
Comments and further suggestions are welcome and can be sent to me at eli@eliwillner.com.
Postscript
Until the authorized filters get around to blocking these sites, it is relatively easy to block them yourself, by programming your router accordingly. It is not as hard as it sounds. If you want guidance, please email the make and model of your router, and the sites you wish to block, to my email address above.
B’ezras Hashem, through our efforts l’shaim shomayim, we will be zoche to useful blogs without their current unsavory side, and to ways of using the productive and necessary parts of the Internet without risking its pitfalls, and in that zechus may we be zoche to Eliyahu HaNavi’s announcement of the arrival of Moshiach (guaranteed that Eliyahu HaNavi will not need a blog to spread that wonderful news!)
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