Nine months after co-founding the China Anti-Cyberbullying Center website, K was woken up by a phone call at 2:30am from a young man asking for help. The young man said his girlfriend was being bullied online, verbally abused by other players while playing video game Honor of Kings. She reported it to the game platform, but the attacks kept coming endlessly. She was very hurt and upset by it. He found the “China Anti-Cyberbullying Resource Platform” website when searching for information about online abuse, and he called the listed hotline. K was a bit groggy when she took the call, but immediately woke up when the caller spoke of cyberbullying. She and other co-founders had set up the website in 2019, and were authorized by the Cyberbullying Research Center in the United States to translate its popular scientific articles into Chinese. The click rate was low, however, with less than 1,000 clicks. This was the first time they had received a call for help. K recalled from these articles how important social support was for victims of online abuse. “She can’t deal with it alone,” K told the young man, suggesting that his girlfriend should quit playing the game, with him holding onto her game account and continuing to report the abuse to customer service, “even if it doesn’t turn out to be useful. ”she said. K couldn’t find out what happened after that, because the young man never called again. “We just want to help people on a case-by-case basis,” K tells WHYNOT. K had started building the website back in China with three friends from high school. They had received scant education on the topic at school about cyberbullying. But then one of her classmates was publicly humiliated on social media after she posted a selfie wearing makeup, when K heard about it, she decided to look online for information about cyberbullying. Then she organized a discussion group with her peers who would gather in a coffee shop every couple of weeks to talk about it. Then, in 2019, the South Korean actress Sulli committed suicide following online abuse. This shocked the high-schoolers, who had been drunk on celebrity culture, and they started to think about the harm cyberbullying can do to people. “Over the past few years, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an era of awakening for Chinese women, including online feminist movement ... but there are too few domestic resources to turn to for help, and not enough popular science articles about cyberbullying,” K says. And there were a lot of disagreements among the high-schoolers. One time, they were talking about whether it was OK to use cyberbullying to punish people for ”immoral behavior,” K recalls. “If you do something illegal, then the law can punish you,” she says. “But if you do something immoral, what then? How can this person get punished? I thought perhaps through cyberbullying, but that’s also immoral.” Others felt that while cyberbullying was undesirable, online criticism could work. But where to draw the line between them? While they all agreed that cyberbullying was wrong, the debate didn’t end there. Meanwhile, these four high-schoolers were getting ready to apply to high schools and colleges in the United States, and they started looking online for resources in English, and came across the work of Justin Patchin and Sameer Hinduja, who founded the Cyberbullying Research Center. They found its website to be rich in content, ranging from definitions of cyberbullying to advice on how to deal with it. The articles were written up as popular science, yet supported by academic research, and there was information for teenagers and their parents. The group wrote to Patchin and Hinduja, and got permission to translate the articles on the site into Chinese. At the same time, they put their own contact information on the website. “I wanted to create a safe space and a hotline to help others, to make it easier for them (victims) to find us,” she says. Self-help and mutual aid Some of the victims of online abuse who responded to the WHYNOT survey said they had sought counseling or spoken to close friends to ease the pain of being targeted online. But more said they had decided to spend less time interacting online, as a form of temporary damage control. Most of the victims said they did complain to the platforms where the abuse took place, but very few tried to make direct contact with the abusers, or take legal action. Only less than 30 percent of respondents said that the cyberbullying had stopped as a result of actions they took. Chun-Chung Choi, associate director at the Irvine Counseling Center of University of California, Irvine, has more than 20 years of experience in counseling psychology at American colleges and universities. During those two decades, he has encountered more than a dozen victims of online abuse, who have included both American and Chinese students. Choi handles these cases differently, depending on the situation, and generally encourages clients to report the abuse, or pursue bullies through legal channels. While universities in the U.S. usually have the Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution office and some other forms of dispute resolution mechanism , Choi has found it’s usually very hard for victims to seek redress through law enforcement. Over the years, he’s known only one person to take legal action; most of the others chose to become withdrawn, remain silent, with some even delaying their progress towards graduation or dropping out entirely. Choi says some cyberbullying can happen at the level of microaggressions, and the damage done by it accumulates slowly over time. “It's not like a physical attack,” he said. ”If I punched you, you will clearly feel the damage being done, whereas many verbal comments aren’t easily identified as hurtful at first, ... yet when you put all those comments together, it would make a huge difference .” Then there is the fact that victims often self-blame – thinking that it was just a few comments, and telling themselves that they are making a big fuss over nothing, he says. Choi has also noticed a sense of powerlessness in targets when dealing with online abuse . “For example, they might say I am not likable; nobody wants to be my friend’,” he says. “These attacks can make you feel as if you are an awful, worthless person, but if you can build a support system in real life, it will come back, and make you believe that you are a valuable person.” When U.S. academic Michael Berry was being attacked by Chinese social media users for translating Fang Fang's Wuhan Diary, a Shanghai-based writer named Zhang Sheng penned a supportive article, which served as an indirect response to the trolls’ attacks. The essay was simply titled “Professor Bai Ruiwen.”(白睿文, Berry’s Chinese name) “The simplicity of that title bore testimony to who I am,” Berry recalls. “He wrote that people had misunderstood, that Mr. Bai [Berry] was not what they had imagined, that he was not working for the CIA.” “I was very touched and grateful that Zhang Sheng had spoken out for me in that ... harsh environment, where a lot of people kept quiet to protect themselves,” he says. Some people texted their support, Berry says. “One movie director sent me a text message and said ‘let’s go for a meal next time you come to Beijing!’ He recalled, “He didn’t mention the Fang Fang’s diary, but I took his meaning,” says Berry. Tzu-I Chuang, a chef, food writer and wife of the former U.S. Consul General in Chengdu, also received hundreds of private messages supporting her after she was bullied online during the 2020 consulate closures in the U.S. and China. “I knew that they were all aware of the risk of harassment and harm just by expressing some empathy, and I was very moved by that,” Chuang says. “I still get sympathy votes even now, even though I haven’t posted much for a long while now, except for the odd puppy photo or food I have cooked,” she says. “People are just a bit more enthusiastic in their praise than they were before, and I am very touched by their love and enthusiasm.” Some targets are also trying to help each other. In April 2021, online trolls launched intensive attacks on feminism. Many feminist activists suffered large-scale online violence on platforms like Weibo, with trolls claiming they were agents of “foreign forces.” Experienced online abuse himself, Zao decided to set up a mutual aid group with his friend - the Online Public Opinion Exchange. “This isn’t a public group. The aim is to give everyone a safe space to speak,” Zao says, adding that most of its participants – who include journalists, online retailers and university students – have been bullied online because of gender issues. “They are all people with a fighting spirit, but everyone still has a vulnerable side,” Zao says. Everyone introduced their experiences of being attacked on the internet in turn, and it had gradually become clear just how much of it is shared. “The point is to identify who is attacking us on the internet, what the perpetrators are like, as well as how to deal with them, and showing others how to deal with them,” Zao says. Zao recalled that everyone also discussed seeking legal redress, making official complaints to Weibo, and other ways of striking back. Compared with violence in real life, Choi belives that cyberbullying has really only appeared in the past 20 years, and Choi thinks widespread public recognition of cyberbullying will take time. Victims want others to understand their experiences, but most people don’t realize quite how serious it is, even when their family or friends are affected. “They have good intentions but don't know how to help, so teach them what you need,” Choi advises. “For example, you can tell them: I just want to share my frustration and sadness; I don't want you to judge me; I just need you to listen and support me.” It is important for the listener to affirm the feelings of the victim, too. “The point is that the victim's feelings have been violated, so we have to support their feelings,” he says. ”It’s really just a matter of listening quietly ..but it’s not easy.” Social media platforms held to account Targets of online abuse develop a low degree of trust in other people, according to Zao. “They are reluctant to talk about it, even if they come across others who were also targets of online bullying ,” he says. This makes it harder for them to form longer-term connections or to take part in the kind of mutual-aid groups that allow people to open up to each other, according to Zao. Zao’s group eventually disbanded before they had tried out all of his ideas, he says, mainly because it attracted the attention of China’s state security police (SSB). Some group members were called in for questioning, otherwise known as “drinking tea with the SSB.” Under pressure from the authorities, Zao felt that the only option was to “disappear for a period of time,” he says. “As a society, we've put an enormous burden on the people who are experiencing the very worst abuse of the internet.,” Viktorya Vilk, program director of Digital Safety Surveillance & Privacy for PEN America, which campaigns for freedom of expression for writers.“But the problem is that when people have the courage to speak up again, sometimes it’s worse than the first time,” Vilk says. Fang Kecheng, an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, has also been a victim of online abuse. He first came to the attention of some Chinese Facebook users, who labeled him a “supporter” of the 2019 Hong Kong protest movement because of some of his posts from Hong Kong at the time. Some even claimed he was pro-independence. When Fang was barred from the Chinese social media platforms WeChat and Weibo, he didn’t try to set up new ones, but instead chose to carry on distributing his content using the more traditional format of email and a newsletter, he tells WHYNOT, giving him a bit more control over what he created. Platforms [like WeChat and Weibo] have never been neutral bystanders; they must be making active choices,” Fang says. The atmosphere on any social media platform is closely related to the design, operation ideas, core algorithm, online traffic tracking mechanisms, and the attitudes of its bosses, he says. “For example, is it easy to report abuse on Weibo? Can private messages be blocked? Are search results for certain keywords given more weight for some people, or are some users given official preapproval for their posts?” Fang says, adding that all of these aspects of a social media platform directly affect the severity of suffering caused to individuals who are subjected to online abuse. He says Weibo directly creates conditions for and directly encourages large numbers of nationalist ”big V” pundit accounts, which command huge online followings. “They will encourage their fans to report and go after people, and then trigger the state apparatus to act against them,” Fang says.This is a “model with traffic, dividends, and profitable interests.” “Any content about online abuse, especially if there are public comments, will add another twist of the knife in the back of anyone who has been abused; but for the platform, any comment is something that can be written in the next quarterly earnings report, a new piece of data,” Fang Kecheng added. In 2021, a 37-page report by PEN America offered a series of product fixes for different social media platforms, including a “shield mode” to block online abuse; an SOS button and real-time support functions for when users are under attack; More rapid response teams to complaints. The report deliberately avoids using the words “cyberbully” or “trolling” to describe online violence. According to Vilk, “cyberbullying” is reminiscent of students “teasing each other” at school. “When somebody threatens to kill you online or if they threaten to kill your children, it's not bullying,” she says, adding that the word ”troll” refers to a mythical creature, which could lead to the misconception that online abuse is somehow linked to Norse mythology. PEN America has been mobilizing public figures, and joining forces with other NGOs to pressure tech companies into doing more. But the response, Vilk admits, has been insignificant. “People need to understand that there’s a lot of people that enjoy being mean and cruel and hurting other people,” says Dorothy Espelage, an American psychologist who has been engaged in civic education against cyberbullying for many years and who is also a member of the content advisory board for TikTok. She says some social platforms are exploring how to give users more control, and users will be able to choose who has access to what they post, and how. “What we need to do is take control over that space, and that space is your technology,” Espelage said. “So in your profile, If somebody is repeatedly doing this, report them right. Don't make up reports but report them. Every platform has the opportunity to do that, and they have lots of money to figure out... Social media is supposed to make you happy, and if someone makes you unhappy, they have to leave.” Building emotional connections on social media Berry says that even though most of what he posts on Weibo these days has nothing to do with politics, people insist on politicizing it. “I'm also very distressed,” he says. He doesn’t think of himself as a dissident, “but I think if I give up using it, they would have won and the ‘bad foreigner’ will have successfully driven out.” “I still maintain my little world and do constructive work, not destructive.” Berry added. As the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the world in 2020, more and more people were isolated at home, people were troubled by uncertainty, and the online environment grew worse”, with brand-new slurs being invented and hurled around on social media in recent years. Why do insults travel so far and so fast online? Janis Whitlock, who directs the Cornell Research Program on Self-Injury and Recovery at Cornell University, has researched the impact of social media on mental health. She says that the sheer volume of information available on the internet, as well as its huge power to connect the world, stimulates people’s curiosity and sharing instincts. But it also amplifies our negative tendencies—dehumanization of others, like killing large animals and building high walls. This is a defense mechanism that humans have made in the face of external threats since ancient times, she explains. “You can't really see each other [online],” she says. “They're just avatars, a name or an object.” Without real-life connections and responsibilities, it's easier for people to be reckless on the internet without thinking about the consequences. The internet offers an easier way to vent negative emotion, too, Whitlock says. “Often people are completely unaware of it,” she says. “It gives them a momentary relief, a momentary place to put those frustrated, angry, hurt feelings, but it's not productive. It doesn't make for long-term relief, (and) it doesn't solve the issue.” Meanwhile, Fang and his team at the Chinese University of Hong Kong have started a project called Sunshine Park, aimed at making a better online environment, and a “bright corner of the digital world.” “This world makes people feel bad, but people still have the confidence to do something about it,” he says. By accident, he discovered an emoji package made by a Polish media outlet. He borrowed the idea and developed a Chinese-English bilingual package of “sunshine emoji”, together with his team, which is downloadable from social media platforms including WeChat, WhatsApp and Signal. Emojis are common communication tools in social media, and can also facilitate chatting, Fang says. He and his team hope to create a kinder chat environment in group and private chats through the distribution of “goodwill” emojis. In just eight months since its release, the Chinese and English versions have been downloaded around 6,000 times. “In our daily chats, we often encounter situations where we disagree with another’s opinions. To make sure the chat isn’t misunderstood, we need to do the following three things: first, actively affirm the words we agree with; second, politely refute the remarks that we do not agree with; third, calmly deal with the remarks that we still have doubts about,” Sunny Park explains on its Weibo account. “When agreeing with someone, you can use expressions like ‘deeply inspired,’ ‘wonderful,’ or ‘I agree.’ Before refuting someone, you can use phrases like ‘your comment is valid, but...,’ or ‘I’d like to steer the chat in a different direction,’ ‘I respect your ideas,’ and ‘I’d like to say something’,” it says. “This will allow for gentle transitions. When you need to further consider whether another’s remarks are reasonable, you can use ‘what do you think?’, ‘verifying this,’ ‘worth thinking about,’ and other expressions.” The Chinese emoji pack includes an emoji for ‘lying flat’(躺平), a concept that has taken off in China in the face of an excess of social demands on young people. “There are many structural inequalities that you can't change,” Fang says. ”The only option is to try non-violent non-cooperation.” Don’t let evil spread online Steve Rogers lives on the west coast of the United States. In 2021, he was attacked online by an acquaintance because of his queer identity. He received a large number of malicious text messages and posts on Facebook. He was accused of being a predator, a fraud, and ”taking advantage of our friends”. After all that, he attempted suicide. Ten months later, Rogers spoke to WHTNOT about his attempted suicide, saying that the continuous online bombardment he suffered made him doubt his inner motives and perceptionof himself, and that attempting suicide was a “dangerous and stupid mistake.” While he was being abused online, he remained silent for fear that any response would exacerbate the violence. He thought he could ignore it, and the attacks would stop. During his recovery, his therapist told him he should give himself permission to be angry. “She also helped me to realize that this person is sick and hurting and that it's OK to feel my anger and be mad about it, but it doesn't do me any good to let that anger turn into resentment,” Rogers says. “In the long-run, to forgive that person and to live a beautiful life is my best response to them being sick,” he says. “I can't fix them and I can't even change their behavior, but I can choose how I respond to their behavior.” According to Whitlock, one of the risk factors for online abuse is having been bullied or harassed online. Many perpetrators have a history of trauma, abuse and isolation. “If we attack the bullies for attacking, we're basically just perpetuating the same cycle” Whitlock continued, “we really need to be appealing to them and we need to communicate.We need to communicate (with abusers). Not just it's not acceptable, but it's also you can be forgiven and you can be part of us. We'll help you understand how to be healthy.” Whitlock believes that human society should work together to combat the darker side of human nature. “It's easiest to start early with young people in elementary school, doing just psychological and emotional literacy and empathy, building an understanding, breaking down the tendency to hurt others,” she says. Espelage is hopeful that an increasing popularity of social and emotional learning (SEL) can help to curb the spread of online abuse . In Europe and North America, from elementary school through high school, social and emotional learning has been incorporated into school curricula. Teachers guide students to learn how to regulate their emotions and behaviors through simulated scenarios, role-playing, etc.; how to resolve disagreements with others; how to show respect for people of different backgrounds and cultures; how to make responsible decisions; and how to resist pressure and deal with conflict. “If you have a social emotional learning program or a coping program that teaches kids and adolescents how to cope with stress in general [then] you can reduce cyberbullying without even really talking about it,” Espelage says. One issue is that the pandemic stalled social and emotional learning in many classrooms over the past two years. “We are not actively teaching kids how to manage their emotions, how to resolve conflicts, so conflicts are going to escalate to bullying, which will escalate to more cyber bullying,” Espelage says. PEN America is partnering with other civil society organizations to boost mutual assistance on the internet. They train the public on how to go from being a bystander of online abuse to an ally of the victim. “Even if you cannot rely on your government or the social media companies, at least we can rely on one another,” Vilk said.