The real solution to bad fandoms

Another day, another fan harassment campaign.

This time, it’s over Taylor Swift’s new album. Paste Magazine tried to avoid the predictable ire by publishing their negative review without a byline, but the harassment was seemingly just deflected onto Kayleigh Donaldson, who didn’t even write the review (she does sometimes write for Paste, but not about music). And this kind of behavior from Swift fans isn’t anything new, if it wasn’t obvious. They made Pitchfork writer Olivia Horn lock her Twitter account after a lukewarm review of the Tortured Poets Department—a brief search reveals a worrying amount of stan accounts sending threatening messages, and that’s just what’s public. A writer for Business Insider was sent death threats after a review of the Eras tour, as was yet another Pitchfork critic who reviewed Folklore, and that’s just a few of the writers fans have harassed.

Swift’s fans are just the latest to appear in the news cycle, but fan communities are becoming almost synonymous with bad behavior online. K-pop fans harassing a journalist for asking why BTS was working with someone who had been found guilty of assault and illegal filming. Star Wars fans in general. Selena Gomez fans sending Hailey Bieber death threats over… something (?) despite Gomez herself telling fans to be nice to the same person two years ago. Clearly, this is not going to stop anytime soon

Usually when something like this happens, the discussion circles around whether a public figure needs to tell their fans to stop harassing people. Maybe they do have an obligation to set a good example and to notice when the people who fund their private jets are being goblins. It might do something if your idol is telling you that your behavior is unacceptable. However, they are very much not in charge of the stan accounts or head honchos. Taylor herself does not actually guide @taylorkelce’s or @bettyswiftie’s every keystroke. At some point, there’s really not much more she could possibly do, though she tends to remain silent when this happens anyway.

We can post and lament and beg fandoms to stop sending death threats. And sure, maybe a well-worded statement from a celebrity can get some overzealous fans to back off. But no one actually thinks the hundredth time Selena Gomez goes on Instagram Live to chastise her fans will finally make them see the light of kindness. CGP Grey said it best: wishing upon a star that people be better than they are is a terrible solution every time.

What does work, however, is a structural, systematized solution, which is exactly what content moderation is. Instead of asking what celebrities should do about their nasty fans, what we should be asking is how platforms can dissuade that behavior in the first place. The real reason why harassment is so rampant is that it’s so easy to tell a total stranger to die in a ditch. These platforms encourage increasingly insular, radical communities that quickly become untethered from how real humans interact with each other. And when we direct our energy towards begging famous people to chastise their fans, we let giant megacorporations off the hook. It’s not Taylor Swift who has the power to delete abusive messages, it’s Twitter. It’s not Selena Gomez who can ban rogue stan accounts, it’s Instagram.

Appealing to the decency of decentralized, anonymized masses of fans and stan accounts will never work. Instagram and Twitter themselves, however, are centralized. We as individuals don’t have the power to stymie harassment, but the platforms do. Twitter could zero in on communities surrounding the likes of Taylor Swift and delete obviously harmful posts. It could take harassment seriously, standardize what posts do and don’t count as abusive, and respond quickly when someone is reported for abusive messages. And, as much as I hate to say it, artificial intelligence—in tandem with human beings—could actually help platforms screen for the most common ways people harass each other.

Content moderation is such an obvious solution, yet a surprising amount of coverage about rogue fan communities doesn’t demand it. Donaldson doesn’t mention it in her essay, and neither does the Business Insider writer. I’m pretty sure the reason isn’t that we haven’t thought to make these platforms safer, but that we’ve given up on the possibility. Admittedly, I see where pessimists are coming from; moderation on Twitter has gotten weaker as fan campaigns have continued to ruin people’s lives, not stronger.

But this is the only solution that could possibly work; asking nicely for people to stop hasn’t done anything. And, credit where credit is due, it’s also not all doom and gloom. Instagram has actually taken concrete anti-harassment steps, like an “are you sure you want to say that?” pop-up if someone is about to post something nasty. We can argue about whether Instagram is doing enough—it’s not, given that harassment on the platform is still happening—but at least the intention is there.

If we want these platforms to actually curb harassment, this is where a famous person saying something might actually come in handy. Selena Gomez has 429 million followers on Instagram and 66 million on Twitter; Taylor Swift has 283 million on Instagram and almost 100 million on Twitter. These platforms might not listen to a rando like you or me, but they might listen to the fourth most followed person on the godforsaken app telling them to grow a spine. They might listen to the country’s biggest pop star if she deigned to come out of her well and shame mankind.

Because Uncle Ben was right—great power does come with great responsibility, and hundreds of millions of followers definitely counts as great power. By all means, celebrities can keep telling their fans to knock it off. It’s good PR with the marginal benefit of maybe getting one stan account to back off. But if we really want to make the internet slightly less of a hellscape, celebrities need to stop wasting time on Instagram live, and we need to stop asking them to do so. Take it right to Instagram.