My mediation partner, who is sitting opposite me, is listening attentively. This is very important for me.

When I finish speaking, I feel freer and empowered. I have experienced something like going to confession. It is clear that agreeing to mediation was the right decision for me.

Then comes his turn.





“You can wreck my life”

“I know that you have the power to wreck my life both financially and emotionally,” he begins.

He is clearly very distraught. His voice betrays feelings of regret and fear. He has clearly been thinking for months about his actions and this situation.

At this point I know that the threat is past. I can let go of the anxieties I had about him.

“I have no desire or intention to crush anyone,” I say to him. “I simply want to know why you wrote what you wrote. What made you do that?”

Sami Koivisto ja toinen sovittelijoista Helsingin sovittelutoimistossa.

On hearing this, he starts to untense. He tries genuinely, and for a long time, to find an answer, but is not able to give any reasonable explanation for what he has done.

He says that if someone wrote about his family the kinds of things he wrote about my family then he would feel the same as I did and react in the same way.

The fact that he is also afraid is a relief to me.

For him, thoughtlessly writing stuff online has been a way to let off steam.

He seems to be speaking from the heart. He seems to be a completely normal man, with a healthy sense of empathy. He doesn’t seem to be involved in extremist groups, or sympathetic to them, or even politically active, making the point that it wouldn’t be a good thing in his line of work.

He says that he was not intoxicated when he wrote what he wrote. Writing thoughtless stuff online had become a way for him to let off steam.

He says that he deeply regrets his actions and at several points asks my forgiveness in a way that seems genuine. I say that I forgive him. I know that this man can no longer hurt me and that he would never do anything bad to my family.

I also know that when I get home I will finally be able to tell my partner everything. And I do, that very evening.





What is done cannot be undone

We agree together that he will anonymously help me to write this article, and he stays true to his word.

We return to the question of his reasons, first a couple of months later and then again three months after that. On both occasions, he is still sorry both for his hateful message and for the fact that he is still unable to give a proper explanation for it.

“Sami, I am truly sorry for what I have done and I ask again that you forgive me. Through my own pure stupidity, I put you in a situation which I would never want anyone to find themselves in.”

He says that some discussion platforms serve as “the internet’s sewers and rubbish dumps”. The stuff written there he refers to as “toilet wall scribbles” and “shitposts”.

Wishing to revisit some of the issues that we had already talked about during the mediation session, I send him a few questions, and he emails the following responses.

Would you have written what you wrote if such discussion forums did not exist?

“No.”

You have not been able to give a proper explanation for what you wrote. Would it be true to say that you got carried away in a discussion where others were directing abuse at me?

“Yes, pretty much. :(”

Do you believe that you could end up again in a similar situation and write a similar kind of message?

“Never”

What are the most important things you have learned from this whole process?

“Things like what I wrote should never even be thought. This whole time I have thought about my actions in writing what I did, because it goes totally against my character. I hope that you know this. What is done cannot be undone and I am still disgusted by what I did :( .”





The excruciating wait before mediation

I ask him what he had expected from mediation.

He says that ten months after he wrote the message on the forum he received a text message from the police asking him to contact them. He phoned the police the following day and then went to the station, where he felt the official handled the situation appropriately.

The several-month wait between the police interview and the mediation session was a very difficult time for him. What made it even more tortuous was that I could at any point have broken off the mediation process and taken the case to court.

I'd think ‘so here it is then, my whole future now decided'.

“For months afterwards, if I saw in my letterbox any remotely official looking letter, my heart would start racing and I'd think ‘so here it is then, my whole future now decided.’ I couldn’t bring myself to open them right away,” he said.

“The same feelings returned when I saw that I had got a message from you. I mean that if you had not wanted the mediation process then it would have been the end of me, personally and financially.”

Näkymä Helsingin sovittelutoiminnan toimiston aulaan lasioven takaa.

Do you think we should speak more about hate speech in Finland, or do you think the problem has been exaggerated?

“If we want to talk about hate speech, we should truly focus on its roots and who is really promoting it and why. This way we would be able to nip it in the bud, before the prejudices have time to grow and cause the worst kind of damage.””

Should the police have more resources for monitoring online and social media discussions?

“If websites are properly moderated, the police should be able to get all the information they need, because proper moderation is necessary for the forums to continue operating.”

Do you think that politicians, the media, researchers and other members of society should take a stronger stand against hate speech?

“Based on my age and gender, I perhaps belong to that well-known category of ‘angry young men’. I don’t have any figures, but I have a hunch that people of my age group/gender make up a large proportion of hate speech writers. This should be given more attention. The institutions you mention do not necessarily understand the issue from the perspective of the ‘angry young man’, and so they turn it into lurid stories, ‘click bait’, and airy filler pieces.”

“I still do not want to defend my earlier behaviour, but I get the sense this vibe is still there.”





Hate breeds hate – can we afford to let that happen?

This is how I would interpret what my mediation partner is saying: We have not even begun to understand the phenomenon of hate speech and its significance. It has not been sufficiently researched for us to understand who the people are who benefit from it. In the media, we have written about it far too superficially. Because nobody knows enough about who is writing hate speech and why, people’s perceptions of the whole issue have become distorted.

When sites spreading hate speech are not moderated and there is no intervention in social media discussions, the problem festers and grows. Complaining about it seems to have little positive effect, but rather serves to make it worse. It is time to take action.

At no point in the mediation process did my mediation partner want to shift the responsibility for his own actions onto others. In legal practice, the responsibility for writing a message that breaks the law normally lies with the writer of the message themselves.

The legal and ethical responsibility, depending on the situation, may also lie with the discussion moderators and discussion forums. They have not, however, prevented the growth of hate speech. In principle, the solution is simple: better monitoring.

If you offer space for public discussion and want to generate a good dialogue, you must make sure that it is appropriately monitored – whether you are a discussion website, a media company or an international social media giant. Effective cooperation with the police is vital in order to deal with unpleasant situations as and when they arise, but your basic task of monitoring the quality of the discussion cannot be outsourced to the authorities. It is your own responsibility.

What are the use of laws if the police does not investigate, the prosecutor does not prosecute and the judge does not judge?

It is essential that hate speech legislation be brought up to date, even though disinformation and hatred can never be completely eradicated from the internet. For this reason, freedom of speech must be protected from fascism, racism and other ways of thinking that promote inequality.

Freedom of speech and the equality of all people are at the heart of Western democracy. At the same time, the deterrent effect of criminal legislation is one of its basic principles. In practice, fascism sets itself in opposition to these things. It has led not only to restrictions on freedom of speech but also crimes against humanity.

Whether the laws are changed or not, the important thing is to think on a practical level and remember the reality on the ground. What is the use of laws if the police do not investigate, the prosecutor does not prosecute and the judge does not judge? The handling of hate speech cases in Finland has been uneven to say the least.

If we truly want to bring hate speech under control in our society, we need to decide on the resources we use to tackle it, our attitude towards it and the training we provide to deal with it.

Hate breeds hate and constantly draws new people into its grasp. In anonymous discussions it is too easy to forget that even though the hate expressed might not really amount to anything much, the target of that hate cannot know if this is the case or not.

The fact that the target of that imprecisely splurged hate is in fact another living, feeling human being does not even enter the minds of some. Completely normal fathers and mothers can be drawn into discussions oozing with hate as if it were a form of entertainment.