10/28/10
10/20/10
Forbes... with yet another great article about cyberbullies and libel
Civilizing the Internet, One Lawsuit at a Time (For Now)
People can be meaner online — it’s easier to be harsh in a digital communication when you don’t have look into the faces of those you’re lashing out at. That has given birth to many private and not-so-private flame wars. When flame throwers are cloaked in anonymity, the “harsh” dial is often turned up a few notches.
Those that come under attack from anonymous critics online sometimes file lawsuits to figure out the identities of their attackers. Because of Google’s dominance in the space of offering Internet community tools, such as YouTube and BlogSpot that offer up forums for these attacks, it often ends up in the crosshairs in these lawsuits, subpoenaed to reveal the IP addresses of the online critics.
When former model Liskula Cohen used a defamation lawsuit last year to unmask the anonymous blogger behind “Skanks in NYC,” (despite the plural “skanks,” the blog was devoted solely to Cohen), many pointed to the case as “the end of anonymity on the Web.” After Cohen subpoenaed Google and exposed the blogger as Rosemary Port, she dropped her lawsuit. The case was an example of a “Cyberslapp” — lawsuits filed with the sole purpose of unmasking an online critic.
They don’t mean the end of anonymity — someone has to be ambitious enough to actually file a lawsuit, for one thing, and a judge has to be willing to back them up. Thus far, judges have tended to be open to “cyberslapping.” This month, a judge asked Google to hand over the IP addresses for the YouTube users who called model-turned-business student, Carla Franklin, a “whore” among other things. The judge determined their remarks were sufficiently defamatory enough to override their right to anonymous free speech. “Whore literally means prostitute. Allegations of sexual conduct… are defamatory. It’s especially damaging to a woman who is dependent on her looks and her reputation for her career,” Kaimipono Wenger, an assistant professor at Thomas Jefferson law school, told me last year.
(Franklin says she didn’t just file the lawsuit to “cyberslapp” the person who called her a whore; according to Adrian Chen at Gawker, it’s part of an effort to stop a stalker.)
Meanwhile, Adam Josephs, a Toronto police officer known as Mr. Bubbles for his strong reaction to a G20 protestor’s weapon of choice, has filed a lawsuit asking Google to unmask 23 YouTube commenters who burst his bubble online when video of the confrontation went viral.
In an unusual turn, one of those commenters has decided not to wait until a judge makes a decision on whether Google has to turn over his information. Instead, Todd Mara, 33 and father of two, came forward in The Toronto Star and revealed himself as YouTube commenter “Pussymcfats” who called Bubbles an egomaniac. “I stand by what I did. I thought he was out of line,” said Mara to the Star (via Valleywag).
It’s an interesting turn of events. Usually, online critics hide behind the veil of anonymity until it is drawn back by the hands of the law. Part of the reason that Mara may have come forward is that his comments probably aren’t going to result in a judgment against him in court. He wrote in response to the YouTube video, “officer bubbles probably looks at himself in the mirror a lot.”
Some people are upset about the idea of anonymous commenters being outed, but as I’ve written before, defamation online is as illegal as defamation offline. Illegal speech doesn’t become legal because it’s done anonymously. And courts will do their best to help see justice served.
But unmasking may not be restricted to the the legal system in the future. It might be done on the tech side. Mentioned briefly in a Wall Street Journal article last week about online data-scraping was the company, PeekYou:
New York-based PeekYou LLC has applied for a patent for a method that, among other things, matches people’s real names to the pseudonyms they use on blogs, Twitter and other social networks. PeekYou’s people-search website offers records of about 250 million people, primarily in the U.S. and Canada.
via ‘Scrapers’ Dig Deep for Data on the Web – WSJ.com.
It’s unclear exactly how this works, but likely involves tracking Web activity across multiple sites, to match up cookies from a “real name” account like Facebook with those from pseudonymous accounts on sites like Reddit, Blogger, or Blogspot. Assuming products like this come into regular use in the future, it may be that you just go to a website to find out who “pussymcfats” is, instead of to a judge.
Written by Kashmir Hill
http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2010/10/20/civilizing-the-internet-one-lawsuit-at-a-time-for-now/
People can be meaner online — it’s easier to be harsh in a digital communication when you don’t have look into the faces of those you’re lashing out at. That has given birth to many private and not-so-private flame wars. When flame throwers are cloaked in anonymity, the “harsh” dial is often turned up a few notches.
Those that come under attack from anonymous critics online sometimes file lawsuits to figure out the identities of their attackers. Because of Google’s dominance in the space of offering Internet community tools, such as YouTube and BlogSpot that offer up forums for these attacks, it often ends up in the crosshairs in these lawsuits, subpoenaed to reveal the IP addresses of the online critics.
When former model Liskula Cohen used a defamation lawsuit last year to unmask the anonymous blogger behind “Skanks in NYC,” (despite the plural “skanks,” the blog was devoted solely to Cohen), many pointed to the case as “the end of anonymity on the Web.” After Cohen subpoenaed Google and exposed the blogger as Rosemary Port, she dropped her lawsuit. The case was an example of a “Cyberslapp” — lawsuits filed with the sole purpose of unmasking an online critic.
They don’t mean the end of anonymity — someone has to be ambitious enough to actually file a lawsuit, for one thing, and a judge has to be willing to back them up. Thus far, judges have tended to be open to “cyberslapping.” This month, a judge asked Google to hand over the IP addresses for the YouTube users who called model-turned-business student, Carla Franklin, a “whore” among other things. The judge determined their remarks were sufficiently defamatory enough to override their right to anonymous free speech. “Whore literally means prostitute. Allegations of sexual conduct… are defamatory. It’s especially damaging to a woman who is dependent on her looks and her reputation for her career,” Kaimipono Wenger, an assistant professor at Thomas Jefferson law school, told me last year.
(Franklin says she didn’t just file the lawsuit to “cyberslapp” the person who called her a whore; according to Adrian Chen at Gawker, it’s part of an effort to stop a stalker.)
Meanwhile, Adam Josephs, a Toronto police officer known as Mr. Bubbles for his strong reaction to a G20 protestor’s weapon of choice, has filed a lawsuit asking Google to unmask 23 YouTube commenters who burst his bubble online when video of the confrontation went viral.
In an unusual turn, one of those commenters has decided not to wait until a judge makes a decision on whether Google has to turn over his information. Instead, Todd Mara, 33 and father of two, came forward in The Toronto Star and revealed himself as YouTube commenter “Pussymcfats” who called Bubbles an egomaniac. “I stand by what I did. I thought he was out of line,” said Mara to the Star (via Valleywag).
It’s an interesting turn of events. Usually, online critics hide behind the veil of anonymity until it is drawn back by the hands of the law. Part of the reason that Mara may have come forward is that his comments probably aren’t going to result in a judgment against him in court. He wrote in response to the YouTube video, “officer bubbles probably looks at himself in the mirror a lot.”
Some people are upset about the idea of anonymous commenters being outed, but as I’ve written before, defamation online is as illegal as defamation offline. Illegal speech doesn’t become legal because it’s done anonymously. And courts will do their best to help see justice served.
But unmasking may not be restricted to the the legal system in the future. It might be done on the tech side. Mentioned briefly in a Wall Street Journal article last week about online data-scraping was the company, PeekYou:
New York-based PeekYou LLC has applied for a patent for a method that, among other things, matches people’s real names to the pseudonyms they use on blogs, Twitter and other social networks. PeekYou’s people-search website offers records of about 250 million people, primarily in the U.S. and Canada.
via ‘Scrapers’ Dig Deep for Data on the Web – WSJ.com.
It’s unclear exactly how this works, but likely involves tracking Web activity across multiple sites, to match up cookies from a “real name” account like Facebook with those from pseudonymous accounts on sites like Reddit, Blogger, or Blogspot. Assuming products like this come into regular use in the future, it may be that you just go to a website to find out who “pussymcfats” is, instead of to a judge.
Written by Kashmir Hill
http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2010/10/20/civilizing-the-internet-one-lawsuit-at-a-time-for-now/
10/18/10
YouTube sued for 'derogatory' video by Toronto cop...
Toronto, Oct 18 (IANS) Posting online comments or YouTube videos anonymously may soon be over if some recent cases are anything to go by.
A Toronto cop, who was mocked after videos of his actions during the G-20 summit here in June were posted on YouTube, is suing Google for $1.2 million in damages and seeking the identity of user `theforcebewithme’ who posted them and 24 others who made derogatory comments against him.
Nicknamed ‘Officer Bubbles,’ Constable Adam Josephs was filmed by someone during the Toronto protests while threatening a young woman with arrest if she blew bubbles in his face.
One of the comments on the videos reads: “I love the fact that this Nazi’s name is known. I am hoping some unstable Dilaudid addict takes this (expletive) down.”
The cop is seeking legal action against YouTube and those who posted what he calls defamatory comments against him when he was just performing his duty.
The cop’s lawyer was quoted as saying by the Postmedia News, “From our client’s perspective, he was performing his duty as a police officer in what was an extremely volatile time at the summit.” The lawyer said his client’s actions at the summit may be subject to criticism, but the “reaction had this massive backlash that we say is disproportionate and incommensurate to what happened, and started getting to the point where it included threats.”
The videos have since been taken down.
Just this Friday, a supreme court judge in New York ordered Google to give IP addresses of three people who called Columbia Business School graduate and model Carla Franklin a ‘whore’ on YouTube.
In a much more famous case last year, Canadian model Liskula Cohen, who is based in New York, successfully forced Google to reveal the identity of a blogger who posted her pictures and called her a “skanks In NYC.”
The blogger was identified as Rosemary Port whom the model sued for $3 million.
Thomson Reuters, the world’s largest media company, has just announced not to allow anonymous comments on its website.
A Toronto cop, who was mocked after videos of his actions during the G-20 summit here in June were posted on YouTube, is suing Google for $1.2 million in damages and seeking the identity of user `theforcebewithme’ who posted them and 24 others who made derogatory comments against him.
Nicknamed ‘Officer Bubbles,’ Constable Adam Josephs was filmed by someone during the Toronto protests while threatening a young woman with arrest if she blew bubbles in his face.
One of the comments on the videos reads: “I love the fact that this Nazi’s name is known. I am hoping some unstable Dilaudid addict takes this (expletive) down.”
The cop is seeking legal action against YouTube and those who posted what he calls defamatory comments against him when he was just performing his duty.
The cop’s lawyer was quoted as saying by the Postmedia News, “From our client’s perspective, he was performing his duty as a police officer in what was an extremely volatile time at the summit.” The lawyer said his client’s actions at the summit may be subject to criticism, but the “reaction had this massive backlash that we say is disproportionate and incommensurate to what happened, and started getting to the point where it included threats.”
The videos have since been taken down.
Just this Friday, a supreme court judge in New York ordered Google to give IP addresses of three people who called Columbia Business School graduate and model Carla Franklin a ‘whore’ on YouTube.
In a much more famous case last year, Canadian model Liskula Cohen, who is based in New York, successfully forced Google to reveal the identity of a blogger who posted her pictures and called her a “skanks In NYC.”
The blogger was identified as Rosemary Port whom the model sued for $3 million.
Thomson Reuters, the world’s largest media company, has just announced not to allow anonymous comments on its website.
10/1/10
Ellen Degeneres speaks ut against bullying and harassment...
Thank you Ellen, you always do everything with heart and grace. Your show is one of my fav's, and your voice is important to the victims.
Famous Blogger Micah Jesse speaking out against online harassment and bullying...
Thank you Micah. Your a great man, that is doing his thing, and doing it well.
Another great job took me to Tahiti, Paul Gaugine Cruise Lines....
Iberostar commercial with Antonio Banderas...
So a few months ago I booked this job in Cancun Mexico. It was a great experience working with Antonio Banderas. He was a lovely man, with a great sense of humor...
Check it out and tell me what you think...
Check it out and tell me what you think...
He was great
Shooting... yeah, not exactly tough stuff..
What I did while waiting around
5/18/10
4/13/10
News Sites Rethink Anonymous Online Comments
From the start, Internet users have taken for granted that the territory was both a free-for-all and a digital disguise, allowing them to revel in their power to address the world while keeping their identities concealed.
A New Yorker cartoon from 1993, during the Web’s infancy, with one mutt saying to another, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” became an emblem of that freedom. For years, it was the magazine’s most reproduced cartoon.
A New Yorker cartoon from 1993, during the Web’s infancy, with one mutt saying to another, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” became an emblem of that freedom. For years, it was the magazine’s most reproduced cartoon.
When news sites, after years of hanging back, embraced the idea of allowing readers to post comments, the near-universal assumption was that anyone could weigh in and remain anonymous. But now, that idea is under attack from several directions, and journalists, more than ever, are questioning whether anonymity should be a given on news sites.
The Washington Post plans to revise its comments policy over the next several months, and one of the ideas under consideration is to give greater prominence to commenters using real names.
The New York Times, The Post and many other papers have moved in stages toward requiring that people register before posting comments, providing some information about themselves that is not shown onscreen.
The Huffington Post soon will announce changes, including ranking commenters based in part on how well other readers know and trust their writing.
“Anonymity is just the way things are done. It’s an accepted part of the Internet, but there’s no question that people hide behind anonymity to make vile or controversial comments,” said Arianna Huffington, a founder of The Huffington Post. “I feel that this is almost like an education process. As the rules of the road are changing and the Internet is growing up, the trend is away from anonymity.”
The Plain Dealer of Cleveland recently discovered that anonymous comments on its site, disparaging a local lawyer, were made using the e-mail address of a judge who was presiding over some of that lawyer’s cases.
That kind of proxy has been documented before; what was more unusual was that The Plain Dealer exposed the connection in an article. The judge, Shirley Strickland Saffold, denied sending the messages — her daughter took responsibility for some of them. And last week, the judge sued The Plain Dealer, claiming it had violated her privacy.
The paper acknowledged that it had broken with the tradition of allowing commenters to hide behind screen names, but it served notice that anonymity was a habit, not a guarantee. Susan Goldberg, The Plain Dealer’s editor, declined to comment for this article. But in an interview she gave to her own newspaper, she said that perhaps the paper should not have investigated the identity of the person who posted the comments, “but once we did, I don’t know how you can pretend you don’t know that information.”
Some prominent journalists weighed in on the episode, calling it evidence that news sites should do away with anonymous comments. Leonard Pitts Jr., a Miami Herald columnist,wrote recently that anonymity has made comment streams “havens for a level of crudity, bigotry, meanness and plain nastiness that shocks the tattered remnants of our propriety.”
No one doubts that there is a legitimate value in letting people express opinions that may get them in trouble at work, or may even offend their neighbors, without having to give their names, said William Grueskin, dean of academic affairs at Columbia’s journalism school.
“But a lot of comment boards turn into the equivalent of a barroom brawl, with most of the participants having blood-alcohol levels of 0.10 or higher,” he said. “People who might have something useful to say are less willing to participate in boards where the tomatoes are being thrown.”
He said news organizations were willing to reconsider anonymity in part because comment pages brought in little revenue; advertisers generally do not like to buy space next to opinions, especially incendiary ones.
The debate over anonymity is entwined with the question of giving more weight to comments from some readers than others, based in part on how highly other readers regard them. Some sites already use a version of this approach; Wikipedia users can earn increasing editing rights by gaining the trust of other editors, and when reviews are posted on Amazon.com, those displayed most prominently are those that readers have voted “most helpful” — and they are often written under real names.
Hal Straus, interactivity editor of The Washington Post, said, “We want to be able to establish user tiers, and display variations based on those tiers.” The system is still being planned, but he says it is likely that readers will be asked to rate comments, and that people’s comments will be ranked in part based on the trust those users have earned from other readers — an approach much like the one The Huffington Post is set to adopt. Another criterion could be whether they use their real names.
But experience has shown that when users help rank things online, sites may have to guard against a concerted campaign by a small group of people voting one way and skewing the results.
A popular feature on The Wall Street Journal’s site lets readers decide whether they want to see only those comments posted by subscribers, on the theory that the most dedicated readers might make for a more serious conversation.
A few news organizations, including The Times, have someone review every comment before it goes online, to weed out personal attacks and bigoted comments. Some sites and prominent bloggers, like Andrew Sullivan, simply do not allow comments.
Some news sites review comments after they are posted, but most say they do not have the resources to do routine policing. Many sites allow readers to flag objectionable comments for removal, and make some effort to block comments from people who have repeatedly violated the site’s standards.
If commenters were asked to provide their real names for display online, some would no doubt give false identities, and verifying them would be too labor-intensive to be realistic. But news executives say that merely making the demand for a name and an e-mail address would weed out much of the most offensive commentary.
Several industry executives cited a more fundamental force working in favor of identifying commenters. Through blogging and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, millions of people have grown accustomed to posting their opinions — to say nothing of personal details — with their names attached, for all to see. Adapting the Facebook model, some news sites allow readers to post a picture along with a comment, another step away from anonymity.
“There is a younger generation that doesn’t feel the same need for privacy,” Ms. Huffington said. “Many people, when you give them other choices, they choose not to be anonymous.”
3/8/10
Here is the article from Glamour magazine...
Why Are Nice, Normal Girls Getting Bullied Online?
Because all it takes is one jerk with a log-in and a grudge to launch a vicious, nameless attack against you. Here’s how Meghan Pearce and other young women are fighting back.
One slow afternoon at her Arizona public relations job, 25-year-old Meghan Pearce found herself browsing the Scottsdale page on the gossip website thedirty.com. The site features photos mostly of women and invites readers to post snarky, anonymous comments about them. Pearce knew women who’d been ridiculed on The Dirty, so she’d occasionally log on to read it with the morbid fascination of a rubbernecker at the scene of a car wreck.
Clicking through the site, she came upon a category called “Would You?” where users debate whether they’d have sex with the women in the photos. The consensus is almost always “no,” and the reasons are a competition in cruelty. “Face like a horse!” says a typical comment. “Giant nipples,” says another. And then Pearce froze—there on the computer screen she saw her photo. In the picture, taken at a fashion show she’d modeled in, Pearce was strutting the runway in a short red dress; she’d liked it enough to post it on her MySpace page. Now, stomach churning, she opened the comments link, bracing for what readers of The Dirty had to say.
Her worst fears were confirmed. “Thunder thighs!” she saw. Another post said that she looked like a shih tzu. Perhaps most hurtful was when she read that her nose was “too big”; as a child, Pearce had been self-conscious about her nose. Even as she began to cry, Pearce kept reading the insults. She wasn’t the only one: Within days, she got sympathetic calls and e-mails from friends as far away as New York who had seen the posts too.
In the face of this public humiliation, Pearce’s confidence plummeted. She doubled her workouts and briefly considered cosmetic surgery. I have a boyfriend, I don’t go out much, I try to be nice, Pearce said to herself. Who would do this to me?
Anonymous online trash talk—the operative word being trash—isn’t exactly new, but some experts say it’s spreading. Whether on social-networking sites, gossip blogs or message boards, it seems as though women’s reputations are being shredded more often, and more viciously, than ever. One study showed that Web users with female screen names got more than 25 times the malicious feedback than those with male names. At ReputationDefender, a firm that attempts to remove nasty Web comments (or make them harder to find) on behalf of its clients, two thirds of the customers who have been attacked online are women.
Some sites, like The Dirty, appear to exist solely to put down women. Other sites focus on college gossip, like Anonymous Confession Board. (Sample ACB post: “These girls will do anything for a d—k.”) Mean taunts are everywhere, from blogs to social-networking sites like My Space and Twitter. “The Web is being used, especially anonymously, to say things you wouldn’t say to someone’s face,” says Michael Fertik, CEO of ReputationDefender. Adds Jean Twenge, Ph.D., coauthor of The Narcissism Epidemic, “When people’s identities are hidden, they’re more likely to be aggressive. It’s a lot harder to hurt people when you’re looking them in the eye.” Just one insult can spur dozens of others and ratchet up the level of malice. “Nasty gossip has gone viral,” says Fertik.
One possible reason the cruel chatter keeps increasing is because few are held responsible for what they post, but that may be changing. Women are now fighting back to stop this slimy trend. By exposing their attackers or helping to lead awareness campaigns, they are altering the online landscape and leaving cyber bullies fewer places to hide.
Take the case of Liskula Cohen, 38. The ex-model was called a “psychotic, lying, whoring…skank” on Skanks in NYC, a now defunct website seemingly launched for just one purpose: to attack her reputation. When Cohen sought legal help to unmask her tormentor, she got little encouragement. Some judges, in the interest of protecting free speech, have refused to require websites and Internet service providers to identify anonymous posters, says Jayne Hitchcock, president of Working to Halt Online Abuse.
Cohen didn’t let that stop her. She asked a court to force Google, whose subsidiary hosted the blog, to identify the site’s author. Last August, in what legal experts call a precedent- setting ruling, a judge ordered the company to disclose the Skanks in NYC author’s e-mail address. Google, which has always defended the privacy of its users, said in a statement that it would provide such information only in response to a court order.
To her surprise, Cohen learned that the blogger was someone she knew, Rosemary Port. (Reportedly, Cohen had bad-mouthed Port to Port’s ex-boyfriend.) All Cohen wanted, she says, was an apology, which she says she received. Cohen has a theory for why Port, and others, resort to cyber-slime. “People sit at home bored out of their minds, and they spew hate,” she says. “It’s become the wild, wild West.”
Cohen’s taunter focused on her sexuality. That’s typical of online attackers, who, experts say, tend to zero in on two things: physical traits and sexual behavior. Take this comment from The Dirty, on a photo of a young woman in shorts: “She’ll spread those nasty cottage cheese thighs for anybody.”
Although it’s impossible to get a gender breakdown of anonymous posters, the
tone of most of the comments on The Dirty is distinctly male. Where is all of this venom coming from? According to Danielle Citron, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law who studies online bullying, the Web has become a haven for women-haters, partly because it’s no longer socially acceptable to sexually harass women at work or school. “We’ve pushed a lot of that animus to the Internet,” she says. “That’s where men who resent women—perhaps because they feel outpaced by them at work or school—can express it anonymously.”
tone of most of the comments on The Dirty is distinctly male. Where is all of this venom coming from? According to Danielle Citron, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law who studies online bullying, the Web has become a haven for women-haters, partly because it’s no longer socially acceptable to sexually harass women at work or school. “We’ve pushed a lot of that animus to the Internet,” she says. “That’s where men who resent women—perhaps because they feel outpaced by them at work or school—can express it anonymously.”
But there are plenty of mean girls online too. While men spread insults about women to exert power or get revenge for spurned sexual advances, says Danah Boyd, a Microsoft researcher and a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, women do so to compete over social status or men. Jayne Hitchcock once had a client who began receiving phone calls from male strangers requesting sex after her ex’s new wife posted false profiles of her announcing that she was “easy.”
It’s tempting to minimize the harm online trash talk can do, but in an age when everyone, from potential dates to prospective employers, googles first and asks questions later, Web chatter matters. “Having insults appear online is an especially severe form of social rejection,” Twenge says.
Take the case of one student at Florida International University who’d arrived at school freshman year weighing only 95 pounds. She’d suffered from an eating disorder in high school but worked hard in college to maintain a healthy weight. One day in 2008, while browsing a campus gossip site, she was horrified to read a flurry of online posts that described her as “fat” and a “butterball.” The insults likely made it more difficult to resist her old destructive habits. “These heartless people obviously had no idea what they were dealing with,” she says. “I felt worthless.”
Spreading online gossip is easy, but combating it isn’t. After she saw her photo on The Dirty, Meghan Pearce called an attorney, but was shocked to learn she had little recourse. Federal law protects websites from being held liable for comments. While commenters can be sued, that would require outing them, which can be tough since sites aren’t required to reveal their identities unless subpoenaed. So far, some courts have ruled that online remarks are often so over-the-top that they shouldn’t be taken seriously, says Matt Zimmerman, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Getting photos removed from a site can be just as difficult. Often it’s up to the site’s owner to decide whether to take them down.
Pearce found her own ways to protect herself: She deleted her My Space profile to prevent anyone from stealing her image again. Then she contacted an acquaintance who worked for The Dirty who helped get the nastier comments removed. “That made me feel better,” Pearce says. That victims of online gossip have so few legal options shows that it’s time to reassess the laws on Web content, says Fertik: “There’s consensus growing that there needs to be some refreshing of the law.”
Some cyber-slime victims are determined to have their day in court. In a much-watched case, two female Yale Law School grads sued more than two dozen defendants for defaming them on Auto Admit, a popular Web forum for law students and lawyers. On the site, commenters had suggested, among other things, that the two women deserved to be raped, had STDs and traded sexual favors for good grades. Citing bruised reputations and lost employment—one victim says that she had been turned down for 16 jobs—the women sought $245,400 in damages. Last October they settled out of court with some of the defendants for an undisclosed amount. Experts say just filing the lawsuit has helped cool down the vicious tone on the AutoAdmit forum.
Other opponents of online gossip say the best way to quash the cruelty is to persuade people to just log off—to stop giving hate-spewers an audience. After Prince ton University senior Sarah Ferguson, 22, was accused of “sleeping with anyone to get popular” on the now defunct website Juicy Campus, she says, “I got paranoid. I heard people in the street whispering, ‘That’s her.’ ” Then she got mad and told her friend and student body president, Connor Diemand- Yauman, about the incident. Inspired by Ferguson, he founded the group Own What You Think. Soon the Prince ton campus blossomed with hundreds of T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan anonymity=cowardice. So far the group has gotten 2,800 people to sign a pledge to “take a stand against anonymous character assassination.” The Princeton effort has spread to other campuses.
Audrie Webster, 21, a recent graduate of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, agrees that the exact same peer pressure that encourages Web nastiness can also help combat it. “I used to read online gossip sites regularly,” she says. But when she and her sorority sisters were called “easy,” “fat” and “pudgy” by anonymous posters, she quit cold turkey. “Those sites just fuel a fire of gossip and drama, neither of which I want to be a part of my life.”
How to Protect Yourself From Online Gossip
1. Don’t post Girls Gone Wild-worthy shots of yourself on My Space, Facebook or anywhere they can be copied. On photo-sharing sites, use privacy settings.
2. Is someone saying malicious things about you online? E-mail a polite request to the site’s webmaster, asking that the offensive material be deleted.
3. You might consider calling in the pros, like ReputationDefender for about $15 a month. But, be aware: Web gossip is so hard to control that there are no guarantees.
2/9/10
some great articles...let me know what you think...and a great petition
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/world/americas/27iht-letter.1.15670185.html
http://www.lenmunsil.com/2007/09/the_cowardice_of_anonymity.php
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/ownwhatyouthink/
http://www.lenmunsil.com/2007/09/the_cowardice_of_anonymity.php
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/ownwhatyouthink/
1/28/10
1/26/10
My cheek on Jan 13th 2007...
A lot of people ask me why it was so important for me to know who wrote that disgusting blog about me...
This is why...
This is why...
On January 13th in NYC I was hit with something made of glass, by a man I had never met.
I never spoke to the media, and he did very little time in jail. I was told about this blog shortly after he was released from jail (the second time) and I thought that just maybe he had written the blog. See he went back into jail for doing the exact same thing to another woman in a bar in NYC, and for violating his probation. And when he was released...poof...there was this blog. He was the only person I thought would do this to me. He attacked me once, and I was afraid that he had attacked me again.
I have never released this picture to this media, and it is not here for anyone to use. Thank you.
How many kids have to commit suicide before we realize that this is a real problem?
Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have found signs of an apparent connection between bullying, being bullied and suicide in children, according to a new review of studies from 13 countries.
Almost all of the studies found connections between being bullied and suicidal thoughts among children. Five reported that bullying victims were two to nine times more likely to report suicidal thoughts than other children were.
Not just the victims were in danger: "The perpetrators who are the bullies also have an increased risk for suicidal behaviors."
http://meganmeierfoundation.org/story
Almost all of the studies found connections between being bullied and suicidal thoughts among children. Five reported that bullying victims were two to nine times more likely to report suicidal thoughts than other children were.
Not just the victims were in danger: "The perpetrators who are the bullies also have an increased risk for suicidal behaviors."
http://meganmeierfoundation.org/story
http://www.jeffreyjohnston.org/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/interviews/halligan.html
VERY INTERESTING ARTICLE
Massachusetts Teen’s Suicide Reopens Discussion on Cyberbullying Legislation
January 26th, 2010
In yet another story highlighting the tragic consequences of cyberbullying, a 15-year-old Massachusetts girl hung herself after facing psychological abuse and harassment from bullies in school and online. According to ABC News, Phoebe Prince, an Irish immigrant and new arrival to the small Massachusettes town, committed suicide in part because she “had been teased incessantly, taunted by text messages and harassed on social networking sites like Facebook.” The news of Phoebe Prince’s suicide comes not long after a number of other tragic teen deaths, including the suicide of a 13-year-old Florida girl who had been victimized in school for “sexting.”
It is unclear at this point whether any formal charges will be sought against the individuals who bullied the girl, but the district attorney covering the case has said that there is an “open investigation” in place. For many child advocates, this latest incident has renewed interest in the development of cyberbullying legislation, something that was first considered in 2008 following the suicide of teenager Megan Meier. In an editorial for the Boston Herald, Margery Eagan echos the call for more substantial punishment for cyberbullies.
From the article
When South Hadley authorities find the girls who drove Phoebe Prince to take her own life, they should prosecute them.
Stop pretending they’re just cruel and nasty girls being girls. They’re criminal torturers.
Once upon a time, as the bullied among us know, the torment ended at our front door. We were safe at home, enclosed by four walls, relieved, at least until the next morning at school.
But in wired-up 2010, there is no escape. The taunts come right through the bedroom walls. South Hadley High’s principal said Phoebe Prince was targeted via texts on her cell phone and taunts on her computer and Facebook and other social networking sites. Her tormentors had access 24 hours a day.
When South Hadley authorities find the girls who drove Phoebe Prince to take her own life, they should prosecute them.
Stop pretending they’re just cruel and nasty girls being girls. They’re criminal torturers.
Once upon a time, as the bullied among us know, the torment ended at our front door. We were safe at home, enclosed by four walls, relieved, at least until the next morning at school.
But in wired-up 2010, there is no escape. The taunts come right through the bedroom walls. South Hadley High’s principal said Phoebe Prince was targeted via texts on her cell phone and taunts on her computer and Facebook and other social networking sites. Her tormentors had access 24 hours a day.
While the development of anti-cyberbullying legislation may help states prosecute cyberbullies more severely, truthfully, there is no guarantee that it will reduce the number of cyberbullying incidents. As we wrote last week, kids and teens spend nearly every waking hour using digital technologies. Spending free time online has become the de facto pastime of our nation’s youth. To this end, the most effective way to prevent cyberbullying is to have an active and ongoing dialogue with your children about their Internet use and to spend time monitoring their behavior on the web for any warning signs of possible abuse.
For more information on talking to your kids about their Internet behavior, along with other suggestions to help stop cyberbullying before it stars, check out our guide on how to recognize and prevent cyberbullying.
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