曾幾何時，互聯網還是一片充滿各種可能性的樂土。來自五湖四海的人們通過互聯網這個平臺，與素未謀面的陌生人交上了朋友，并且用LiveJournal、GeoCities和Myspace等聊天工具分享他們的熱情和見解。互聯網的誕生還拉開了信息民主化的大幕，從此，信息再也不會被完全掌控和操縱在主流媒體手中。

而如今的網絡已經變得比當初復雜得多了，寫博客似乎已經成了老年人的消遣，我們的注意力基本上都被少數幾家大公司（尤其是Facebook）所操縱，而且幾乎所有青少年都有他們自己的“個人品牌”。早期互聯網給人的那種單純的大學文青范兒早已蕩然無存，如今的互聯網就像一個糞坑，各種無下限和潑臟水。你在Twitter上不管搜索一下哪個公眾人物，都可以看到一大堆跟種族主義或性別歧視有關的攻擊和威脅。

更糟糕的是，你就算自己不招惹這些下三濫的東西，這些攻擊和威脅還會自己送上門來。比如作家杰西卡·瓦蘭蒂最近宣布退出社交媒體，緣由是一位Instagram的用戶向她發來消息，威脅要奸殺她年僅5歲的女兒。瓦蘭蒂今年七月在Tweeter上表示：“我不應該每天在恐懼里生活。”

像Twitter這樣的網絡服務商一直希望他們的用戶群體能夠做到自律，使那些網絡流氓羞于搞出出格的言行。

網絡暴民心態，加上隔著屏幕造成的人性化交流的缺失，使得憤怒和惡毒的情緒在網上四處蔓延。互聯網的本意是要構建一個互聯的世界，但是在朝著這個美好愿望前進的過程中，我們卻失去了作為一個普通人應有的禮貌。據網絡安全公司諾頓（Norton）最近的調查顯示，網絡上對女性的騷擾已經成為“家常便飯”，在被調查的30歲以下的女性中，有76%曾在網上遭遇過惡意辱罵和騷擾。

對于Facebook這種熱門網絡服務商來說，如果他們的平臺上總是充斥著各種辱罵和歧視，顯然不利于自身業務的（因為用戶和廣告商必定會敬而遠之）。Facebook目前就正在開發一些工具以解決網絡騷擾問題。Facebook的子公司Instagram最近也允許泰勒·斯威夫特等明星設置一些“敏感詞”，以自動篩出她們的照片下方的惡意評論。

Twitter并不要求用戶實名注冊，并且它曾一度自稱是“言論自由黨的言論自由之翼。”但是如今Twitter也不得不朝這個方向走了。近日該公司CEO杰克·多西決定，公司要將抑制網友的惡意攻擊謾罵作為頭等大事來抓，這說明Twitter的立場已經發生了重大轉變。前一陣一位Twitter網友因公開煽動其粉絲攻擊女演員萊斯莉·瓊斯而遭到Twitter封禁。消息付出之后，網上的“言論自由黨”們紛紛跳出來抵制Twitter。然而這些“言論自由黨”們錯了。我們曾希望建立一個開放、文明、自律的網絡環境，然而現在這個希望已經破滅了。主宰當今的互聯網的幾個大平臺越早意識到這一點，我們所有人才能過得更安全，同時也更文明。

本文的另一版本以“霸凌與流氓”（Bullies and Trolls）為題刊登在了2016年9月1日刊的《財富》雜志上。（財富中文網）

譯者：樸成奎

Once upon a URL,?the World Wide Web was a place of fantastic possibility. People went online to meet and befriend total strangers. They could share their passions and opinions on LiveJournal or GeoCities or even Myspace. The democratization of information, no longer controlled and distributed exclusively by the mainstream media, was liberating.

Today the web is far more sophisticated—the idea of blogging seems quaint, a handful of giant companies (mostly Facebook) controls what we discover, and teenagers all have their own “personal brands.” More notably the innocent, collegial, summer-camp feeling of the early web has been replaced by a cesspool of attention mongering and outrage. Peruse the Twitter mentions of any public figure, and you’ll find a trove of racist and sexist attacks and threats.

What’s worse, those threats now come in the form of push notifications to our smartphones. Author Jessica Valenti, for example, recently quit social media after an Instagram user sent a rape and death threat directed at her 5-year-old daughter. “I should not have to wade through horror to get through the day,” she tweeted in July.

Web services like Twitter had long hoped that the vibrant online communities they created would police themselves. Trolls and bullies would be shamed into playing nice.

But mob mentality and the impersonal way screens dehumanize digital communication have allowed hatred and venom to flourish online. Somewhere along the way to the web’s starry-eyed promise of a connected world, we lost track of common decency. Online harassment of women is becoming an “established norm,” according to a recent study by cybersecurity company Norton, which found that 76% of the women under 30 surveyed had experienced abuse or harassment online.

Hosting a pit of vitriol is not good for business (users and advertisers will flee), so what’s a popular Internet service to do? For Facebook, it’s building tools for the targets of harassment. The company’s subsidiary Instagram recently allowed Taylor Swift and other celebrities to filter out certain words and phrases from the comments below their photos.

Twitter, which doesn’t require people to use their real names and once called itself “the free speech wing of the free speech party,” is moving in that direction. CEO Jack Dorsey’s decision to prioritize curbing abuse marked a major shift. Fellow members of the “free speech party” balked when the company permanently banned a bully who directed his followers to attack actress Leslie Jones, prompting her to publicly quit the service. But those free speech defenders are misguided.The promise of an open, decent, self-policing web that people actually want to spend time on is dead. The sooner the platforms that control today’s web understand that, the safer—and saner—we’ll all be.

A version of this article appears in the September 1, 2016 issue of Fortune with the headline “Bullies and Trolls.”