France is likely to enact a law to ban websites that encourage anorexia. If I was feeling cynical, I might suggest that there is a kind of cowardice in banning the sites, rather than addressing the social forces that might cause women to starve themselves to death. The law would be defensible in a “You can’t shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater” kind of way if it could be shown that banning these sites would actually save a life somewhere. As it stands, I have trouble believing this law will actually save lives. Also, how in the world can such a law be enforced? If a law such as this was passed in America, it would mean that all the pro-ana groups on MySpace and Facebook would be illegal. Who would be responsible for enforcement, the government or MySpace and Facebook? Would usernames such as “Ana is my sister” and “I love Ana” become illegal? Such a law would mean that the folks who started Ana Friends would face criminal charges. It would also raise tricky questions about who holds the responsibilty for the forums that users start on big websites. For instance, who would face criminal sanctions for the pro-anorexia forum on LiveJournal, LiveJournal, or the woman who started the forum?

This is from the article:

The bill, approved by France’s lower house of Parliament, still faces a vote in the Senate. But if passed, it would take aim at any means of mass communication - magazines, blogs, Web sites - that promote eating disorders like anorexia or bulimia with punishments of up to three years in prison and €45,000, or $71,000 fines.

The new law was sponsored by Valérie Boyer, a conservative lawmaker from the Bouches-du-Rhone region in the south of France, but was also supported by the government’s health minister, Roselyne Bachelot.

“We have noticed,” Boyer said in an interview with The Associated Press, “that the sociocultural and media environment seems to favor the emergence of troubled nutritional behavior, and that is why I think it necessary to act.”

With such a law, the French legislators are seeking to tame a murky world of some 400 sites extolling “ana” and “mia,” fond nicknames for anorexia and bulimia. Since 2000, the Web sites have multiplied in different languages with blunt tips on crash dieting, binging, vomiting and hiding weight loss from concerned parents.

In Spain, support groups have emerged to counter the influence of pro-ana Web sites, and government authorities prodded Microsoft to close down four such groups on its social networking site, Live Spaces. Health experts in Britain have also attacked the growth of Web sites that refer to anorexia as “my friend ana.”

The wording of the bill would make it illegal to “provoke a person to seek excessive weight loss by encouraging prolonged nutritional deprivation that would have the effect of exposing them to risk of death or endangering health.”

Like the War On Drugs, which disproportionately targets racial minorities, this law seems likely to be enforced unfairly, along lines that mirror the existing status quo of the social status of various groups. By that I mean, the 17 year old who starts a website where people talk about hating food may face arrest or fines, whereas established companies and magazines that publish articles about crash diets are, in my opinion, unlikely to face criminal prosecution. Yet where do 17 year olds get the idea that food is the enemy?

On sites like MySpace, pro-ana groups have been around for several years:

Pro anorexia sites, or pro-ana as they are called, have been a huge controversy over the last few years as more and more people struggle and die of eating disorders. Some say they should be banned, while others argue that you can’t ban people because of freedom of speech.

The groups and individuals responsible for pro-ana sites have found their way onto MySpace, a public domain where users create profiles of themselves. There are hundreds of profiles of people who have “thinspiration” photos up to encourage themselves and others to keep striving to lose more weight.

Their photo galleries and message boards are filled with photos of models that look deathly ill, as well as celebrities who have bones sticking out. They glamorize the disease and motivate each other to “keep strong.”

Most of the personal profiles are private and say that they will only add you as a “friend” if you have an eating disorder. This way, they can create their own communities on-line that foster their idea that being sick is okay. They like to call it a lifestyle choice.

The public and private groups of pro-ana or pro-mia profiles have things like “Thinspiration Pic of the Week,” “Tips and Tricks,” “Stats,” and other such topics. They’re mostly littered with pictures of celebrities and models they admire who are VERY thin.

Does the law address the underlying issues? Can any law help people who are struggling with an eating disorder? How does the law help Mary, who (in comments at danah boyd’s website) wrote:

It’s never good enough for them.

I am anorexic and go to pro-ana websites all the time.

The only reason why I continue to starve myself is because I need to lose enough weight that my parents will actually notice me.

Unless I get down to 86lbs, it will just be a phase to them.

Is this really an issue best addressed by the use of the coercive power of the state? If the state has to intervene in this issue, wouldn’t greater access to therapy be a more appropriate response? (Again, the parallel that suggests itself is the War On Drugs.)

One place where the state can play a positive role is in addressing power imbalances. In a civil society, the weak should not automatically be governed by the strong. If there was a powerful commerical interest promoting anorexia to children, then, of course, there might be an argument for the state to take a role in this issue. But is it a case of defending the weak from the strong when the government bans pro-ana websites?

One could argue that there are, in fact, powerful commerical interests that promote anorexia. One could argue that every diet company out there, from Weight Watchers to Slimfast, are all implicitly pushing the message “Your body is ugly; you need to lose more weight.” (I’m not sure what the French equivalents are for these companies; those of you who do know, please feel free to post links in the comments). If the government absolutely had to intervene in this issue, then wouldn’t it make sense for it to focus on the companies and media outlets that relentlessly push dieting? Isn’t it hypocritical to allow free reign to these companies, yet take action against a website where people make explicit the extreme conclusion that derives from a message of “Your body is ugly”?

The rise of the Internet has lead some people to worry that there is too much freedom. Mostly the concern is expressed in terms of the effects on children (”Holy crap, the kids have their own lives on the Internet“). Clay Shirky spells out some of the implications, in his review of the book “Cult Of The Amatuer:

We can no longer limit things like who gets to form self-help groups through social controls (the church will rent its basement to AA but not to the pro-ana kids), because no one needs help or permission to form such a group anymore.

The hard question contained in Cult of the Amateur is “What are we going to do about the negative effects of freedom?” Our side has generally advocated having as few limits as possible (when we even admit that there are downsides), but we’ve been short on particular cases. It’s easy to tell the newspaper people to quit whining, because the writing has been on the wall since Brad Templeton founded Clarinet. It’s harder to say what we should be doing about the pro-ana kids, or the newly robust terror networks.

Those cases are going to shift us from prevention to reaction (a shift that parallels the current model of publishing first, then filtering later), but so much of the conversation about the social effects of the internet has been so upbeat that even when there is an obvious catastrophe (as with the essjay crisis on Wikipedia), we talk about it amongst ourselves, but not in public.

What Wikipedia (and Digg and eBay and craigslist) have shown us is that mature systems have more controls than immature ones, as the number of bad cases is identified and dealt with, and as these systems become more critical and more populous, the number of bad cases (and therefore the granularity and sophistication of the controls) will continue to increase.

We are creating a governance model for the world that will coalesce after the pre-internet institutions suffer whatever damage or decay they are going to suffer. The conversation about those governance models, what they look like and why we need them, is going to move out into the general public with CotA, and we should be ready for it. My fear, though, is that we will instead get a game of “Did not!”, “Did so!”, and miss the opportunity to say something much more important.

If the government does not attempt to regulate this particular form of self-expression online, it is possible that the corporate owners of these web sites will begin enforcing some censorship on their own:

I’d have to add into there that News Corp answers not only to it’s advertisers and users but to it’s own political agenda as well. Unless it flames out into a mass exodus odds are some sort of dynamic psuedo-equillibrium is going to form between those forces. And just how that psuedo-equillibrium is constituted is going to have a huge impact on what happens in MySpace. Is it a wide open commons for kids to express themselves however they see fit. Or is it a regulatory environment, one where they can express themselves only within a particular set of boundaries set my New Corp execs? And since the later seems almost a given now, perhaps it better to ask just how regulated will it be? Is it just deleting spam, or is it deleting messages that go against News Corps favorite politicians? Deleting trolls or deleting pro-ana profiles?

As always when it comes to forbidding particular forms of speech, if there is going to be censorship, then I’d prefer to see censorship happen at the level of private sector entities. I assume that at least some highly motivated individuals will find a way to meet and form pro-ana groups online, and I don’t see much positive social value in criminalizing those who feel the need to form these groups.

Even folks who believe that the state can accomplish great social good by banning some kinds of speech should hesitate to ban pro-ana groups. There are two main reasons:

1.) Some support/therapy probably happens by accident even on pro-ana groups.

2.) It is unbalanced to ban pro-ana speech while doing nothing to stop the anti-ana hate speech.

As to #1, simply allowing people to give voice to their own self-hatred gives other people the chance to hear them and react with compassion. When a pro-ana woman writes something like this:

Best thing ever to have, otherwise, I would have been a very fat woman.

then there is at least the chance that others might respond with compassion (not that anyone responded with compassion to that particular post). Clearly, some people do feel compassion and support on these sites:

hi all
ive been watching this community for a while now and i cant belive how lovely and supportive everyone is on here
its so rare to be able to open up about our ED’s and not be judged or shouted at.
Ive never been able to talk about my anorexia
they just judge me and i hate that.

danah boyd emphasizes the need for understanding:

For many of us, there’s nothing comforting about pro-Ana communities, yet they’re very present on LJ [LiveJournal]. Understanding why these communities flourish on LJ says a lot about both the tool and the culture we live in. Efforts to destroy them will be devastating to the individuals and communities involved, even though the behavior seems so self-destructive. The trick is not to be patronizing, but to understand.

As to #2, isn’t there something unbalanced about banning pro-ana groups, but allowing anti-ana hate speech? Such as:

why the fuck would anyone have sympathy for people like you? those of you who worry and nag about your weight or image yet aren’t even intelligent enough to open up a few medical journals or health and fitness magazines to educate themselves on what the body needs to thrive and appear the way you want to appear? oh, because you are lazy and stupid. why would i have sympathy for people who don’t work for their body and instead just starve themselves and hope nature does the work for them? stupid.

followed by:

they are called attention whores.

followed by:

Pro-ana girls have no curves at all. Sorry girls, I like my boobs.

followed by:

It ruins health and mental health, but more to the point it takes Tits and ass. I like tits and ass.

followed by:

If people want to kill themselves starving, i say go ahead. A few less idiot’s in the world. I even have a simpler way for them. Gun, Pills, or step in front of a car…faster way.

All in all, I have trouble imagining that such a law will acheive any social good. I doubt that such a law will save a single life, whereas I can imagine such a law denying people a forum where perhaps they were engaged in some cathartic venting, or perhaps even received some helpful compassion.