Thousands of people? Where did you get that number from? Also, there were (misguided) reasons for people to be upset, which does not justify the racism, but hey, extreme insults are normal if you are very angry (no, not just on the Internet but also outside tech filter bubbles).
I'd much rather eradicate murder. Murder sucks. It needs to stop being a normal day-to-day occurrence in our lives. Someone, somewhere will be murdered today. How can you continue with your life knowing that will happen? Worse - it will be more than one person! Multiple people will be murdered today, tomorrow, and every day in the future too! Most of them are total strangers, but maybe one day it will be someone you know. I don't want to live in a world like that. In fact, I don't think anyone wants to live in a world with murder.
We have laws against it, we punish murderers, but murder still happens! All of our attempts over thousands of years have failed to eradicate murder! There has to be more we can do! Do you have suggestions?
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In case my point isn't made clear: there are some things that are simply facts of life. You will not be able to solve them. People are emotional and will react on those emotions. Sometimes people will do terrible things while acting on these emotions. Sometimes we will fight with one another, sometimes we will throw fists at one another, sometimes we will call each other names. We'll bury each other 6' under ground. These are things that happen. We know they happen. We expect them to happen. While none of us wishes these things happen, we recognize that they will happen. That recognition of things that will happen is what makes those things normal. Normal things do not get our attention. We haven't been trained to care about expected, normal things.
I recognize that tomorrow morning, the sun will rise. It's a very special event. It means the sun is still burning and providing light and life to the planet. It's a normal occurrence though. The sun will rise the day after tomorrow. In fact, the sun will likely rise every day for the rest of my life. It's an expected occurrence. It's a normal one. I don't celebrate it. I don't pay attention to it, most of the time. Some days I might appreciate the sunrise and the beauty of it. Most days it gets ignored.
Some days I notice some terrible occurrence happening in the world. Those terrible things happen every day. They're normal. So most days. They get ignored.
With respect (because I share the feeling), that's an attitude that helps one sleep at night in a broken world, but it's inherently defeatist and decreases the likelihood of positive change. Because things can be changed. Over the work of several decades, the murder rate (along with the violent crime rate) has gone down. Why should we just assume that the same can't be said for bullying and abuse?
There's plenty of question of how much we're willing to spend to solve the problem, of course (to give a terrible ad absurdium example, it's trivial to stop Internet bullying by shutting off the internet). But when we just hand-wave and say "Can't be fixed," we aren't helping.
When people stop posting PII online their abuse rates will go down. That's my conjecture.
In fact, personal abuse online has risen online and I blame people being so open with their personally identifying information. I made a related post on this issue here [0]. The solution is not one that people want to subscribe to. They'd rather share their lives on FB and Twitter for the world to see. "The world" includes nasty people and bullies. If people don't want nasty people and bullies to have access to this information, people need to stop sharing it with the world.
It is much easier to harass someone in a credible manner when you have information about them. No information? Nothing to attack. But so many people want to shove their name, gender, sexuality, religion, age, beliefs, and who-knows-what-else in front of everyones' eyes to see. So people who dislike _____ now have something to attack. People who dislike ____ will always and forever exist. Always. Until we remove the right for individuals to hold their own beliefs or have freedom.
Social norms change. Samurai used to ride around and slice people in half just because they could. Public hangings and lynchings used to happen all the time. Most places in the world have eradicated that sort of murder out in the open, and the ones that haven't are making concerted efforts to stop it.
There's nothing about human culture that's consistent except its inconsistency and adaptability. It might not be obvious within a few decades, but big changes do happen.
I totally support that, but the Internet is probably the worst and hardest place to try initiate that change.
Opposed to the real world, wannabe bullies have zero chance of seeing a reaction from their victims if those do not react. Online bullies like there DO lose their interest. Just look at past outrages on reddit to see. People need to despise that these short-term hype shitstorms are not worth reacting to'. Maybe ask PR campaigners how they handle it, there should be decades of research.
I am obviously excluding actual stalkers, sociopaths etc. Those are hard problems but not one you can as easily treat and not a widespread problem.
I definitely think the solution has to be deeper than banning people from forums. People exhibiting sociopathic tendencies have needs that aren't being met in their real lives. They most likely need therapy, counseling, or community support. They might have abusive home lives. The online harrassment issue is a big warning sign that there are deep social issues all over the world that aren't being addressed, but everyone knew that already. What this really calls for is expanded mental health care, but I don't know if anyone is going to respond that way, since it's expensive and requires a lot of people doing hard work.
