When anonymous attackers went after two Yale law students, they struck back

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2009/02/11/Two-Lawyers-Fight-Cyber-Bullying?print=true

by linhir • 17 years ago

42 39 17 years ago

Somehow this vaguely reminds me of patent trolls

russell2• 17 years ago

It's a very long, very good read about what happens when defamation and character attacks get out of hand at a site. The owners did nothing to tone things down or to remove offending posts. It's interesting to note that the victims went after the perps and may have detroyed the perps careers.

I think we need a thoughtful discussion on how to deal with this or congress will do it for us.

hexis• 17 years ago

I understand what you mean, but I think we need much more than a thoughtful discussion. Congress is in a legislatin' mood and I don't think they're interested in arguments for self-regulation.

time_management5• 17 years ago

Most of the perps settled in order to protect their anonymity. The one who really got smashed was Ciolli, co-manager of the site.

tokenadult• 17 years ago

This article is a good explanation of why it is wise to moderate online discussions. "One was finding out the firm where Ciolli would be working upon graduation and pressuring it to withdraw its offer. It turned out to be the Boston law firm of Edwards, Angell, Palmer & Dodge, which in April rescinded its offer. The message board violated 'principles of collegiality and respect that members of the legal profession should observe in their dealings with other lawyers,' the firm’s managing partner, Charles DeWitt, wrote Ciolli."

mickt6• 17 years ago

That's a good point, and maybe without moderation users can act like a mob doing and saying things they normally wouldn't do.

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

The simple fact that they are anonymous is what gives them license to do this, if they were id'd then they'd never do any of this. Anonymity brings out the coward in people, and nowhere more so than online.

smanek2• 17 years ago

Some of the comments were over the line (calling for physical attacks, etc), but most of the people being sued didn't actually say anything illegal (being 'mean' isn't illegal in the US). Jokes, opinions, and fantasy (no matter how lewd) shouldn't be illegal.

The article only acknowledges this at the very end: "But many other posts, however cruel, might not be seen as extreme or outrageous enough to lose their First Amendment protection. As for defamation, the overwhelming majority of the comments could be construed as opinions, which are protected."

These women are going way overboard, and abusing the court system (and the fact that they have sufficient resources to legally harass posters) to get what they want. Frankly, because of their litigious behavior, I don't think I would ever hire either of them.

mickt6• 17 years ago

Imagine a employer or potential investor Googles your name and found such content. Don't you think that they might have second thoughts, and that it could harm your chances?

I can imagine some people's thought processes: Because supposed some of it might be true, right? People wouldn't write that stuff if it was false, would they?

A lot of this is because of good search and indexing techniques by Google and their ilk (and people wanting advertising revenue and opening up their sites to the spiders), because even a few years this stuff that wouldn't have been found at all, and would be a hurricane in a taecup. But, today I think it is a problem as this kind of crap has the possibility to seriously harm people's reputation.

smanek2• 17 years ago

Of course I understand that spreading a negative opinion about someone has negative consequences for the target. And I agree that a decent person shouldn't write that sort of thing.

But, there is a world of difference between what I morally shouldn't do, and what I legally can't do.

I think the Ku Klux Klan is horrible for spouting its bigoted hate speach about minorities - but I don't think we should make it illegal for them to do so.

I (and the law) are in agreement that straight up libel, slander, obscenity, and calls to violence are not protected by free speech, but pretty much everything else is.

By definition, an opinion can't be false (it's my opinion) - and you really don't want a court legislating which opinions someone should be allowed to express. You can be sued for outright lying (slander/libel), but you can not (and should not) be sued for stating an opinion. No matter how ill conceived or malicious that opinion is.

blurry• 17 years ago

Actually, I thought the article pretty clearly stated the opposite of your last point.

One, the women were far from litigious (depends on your definition of course but to me taking a year and using everything from humor to begging in an attempt to resolve the case without going to litigation is the opposite of litigious).

Two, they did not have the resources to sue the posters - unless I misunderstood the article, Google's legal firm is representing them for free because Google wants to have control over any legal precedents that affect their ability to index non-moderated online forums.

joeyo• 17 years ago

That last part about the law firm representing them for free because it would allow Google to have some control over precedent seems, if true, very ethically questionable to me. Lawyer have a responsibility of undivided loyalty to their clients. Just because the work is being done pro bono does not nullify that responsibility.

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

I really hope that you will never be on the receiving end of such a protracted barrage of online harassment.

There is nothing funny about being accused of all kinds of stuff by anonymous individuals, it can do very real harm.

If the perps had been identified, do you think they would have even written all that stuff ? And if they had not then they would not have been pursued.

To claim that they are going overboard is to take away from them the one defense that they have, which is to sue the site owners to get to the data they need to be able to go after those that actually 'did it'.

Sure, they set out to make an example of the people that committed these acts, but that's fine by me.

mickt6• 17 years ago

This is something that can apply to us techies and just about anyone these days. Imagine a potential employer or an investor Google's your name and all they find is crap calling your character, or judgment, or skills into question. Bang goes the job or the funding ...

Heck, I don't even want people I don't know to find my Facebook or Twitter page; all it can takes is someone to post a potentially inappropriate photo, or an inappropriately tagged photo of you for your reputation to be destroyed in some circles. Which is why I keep a professional identity on LinkedIn, and obfuscate my other personal online identities (friend's can find me pretty easily).

time_management5• 17 years ago

I think Google needs to start treating searches on people as a special use case where user-generated websites like Autoadmit get low marks.

It used to be that "public figures" could be scrutinized harshly, in print media, while private citizens had a certain degree of protection. It would be considered harassment for the paper to write an op-ed about John Q. Doe, store manager at the local Drug-Fix, being bad at his job.

Now, it's worse to be a private citizen, because it's much easier to destroy a private person's "Google resume". I could talk shit about a prominent politician for days and wouldn't have much of an effect on his Google presence, but if I (or anyone) decided to go into "digital hit man" mode on Joe Q. Bloggs, it wouldn't take more than half an hour. Because there's so little content about him, it would be easy to make over 90% of web content about him be negative.

prospero3• 17 years ago

I seriously question the judgment of anyone who uses anonymous, hyperbolic statements on the internet as criteria in any decision they make, let alone for a job application.

Historically information in publicly broadcast mediums has been trustworthy, but that's simply not true anymore. We need, as a society, to realize that the signal to noise ratio has dropped precipitously in the last decade, and that this trend will only continue.

That being said, it's astonishingly stupid to spend your free time making fun of the most litigious group of people on the face of the planet. The members of the forums pretty much deserve whatever they get.

russell2• 17 years ago

The legal profession, medicine, and a host of others depend on personal reputation. I can see an employer, recognizing that it is all baseless, passing because he doesn't want to explain to clients or colleagues that it is all baseless, particularly when there are plenty of other candidates. Suppose you or your SO were Googling a potential pediatrician and got pages of molestation accusations?

prospero3• 17 years ago

Are these molestation charges backed by the names of real families, or are they anonymous? There's a world of difference between the two. There's also a clear distinction calling someone a child molester and calling someone "cheerful and big-titted".

If a person isn't willing to put their name behind a statement, then we shouldn't lend it any credence. As lurid as the statements were, I don't think its any different from what went on behind closed doors fifty years ago. Barring wishful thinking, people didn't really believe third-hand rumors, so why should it be any different now?

I wonder, though, if this story would even be a blip on the radar if the two girls' names were replaced by some pop star. Maybe it's just that the bar for celebrity has been lowered to the point that all it takes is to be an attractive girl at a prestigious law school.

madmanslitany2• 17 years ago

I mostly agree--many of the posters do deserve to be punished for what they said, but I think incidents like this one (and other somewhat similar stories like the fuss over JuicyCampus last year) point to a more fundamental societal problem than a dozen trolls trolling away; the only reason why sites like AutoAdmit are able to become headline news is because too many people take garbage gossip seriously that they should rationally be dismissing.

This has always been a problem for human society, but the ease with which information spreads on the internet has heavily increased the amount of damage that it can do.

prospero3• 17 years ago

Just to be clear, I don't really take issue with anything they said. Everything quoted in the article was the same locker room bullshit and wishful thinking that's been around since forever, and I don't buy that moving it to a permanent medium necessarily makes it a scourge on society.

But it's just plain dumb to give self-important law students a chance to flex their legal muscles. I don't think the fallout was warranted, but it was obviously coming.

time_management5• 17 years ago

The members of the forums pretty much deserve whatever they get.

These two girls were not posters on the board, and the things that were said about them were beyond repugnant. Although there are some good discussions and some really, really smart people on XO, the board's generally a cesspool. An educated cesspool, but a cesspool nonetheless.

I think both sides went too far. I don't have any sympathy for the trolls, and "Pauliewalnuts" I know offline and he's a sociopath. But ruining Ciolli's career, because he was one of the few "outed" targets, was out of line. They hit him hard to pressure him into outing the real offenders, who were anonymous. Hence the countersuit.

kragen2• 17 years ago

You're sorting through a pile of 50 resumes and you look up each person on Google. 15 of the searches turn up seriously negative results: apparently former co-workers who hated working with the people, accusations of theft, bribery, etc. You investigate further, and in only a week, you are able to substantiate the claims against 13 of the applicants. Your boss reprimands you for spending so much time on screening applicants for a single position.

Six months later, you're sorting through a pile of 50 resumes and find 18 seriouly negative results. What do you do?

Locke• 17 years ago

I'm not convinced there was anything illegal about the threatening / abusive postings. I think we need to be careful about protecting our freedom of speech.

However, I'm very happy that those individuals who were identified have faced social repercussions for their behavior. I would not want anything to do with any of those posters. If I were hiring, I wouldn't hire any of them. I would probably boycott any businesses that work with them. If they're free to be jerks, I'm free take my business elsewhere.

Therein lies the more interesting issue. Anonymity. It's hard to exert social pressure on bad behavior if you can't identify the people involved. Do we have a right to be anonymous online? Do the pros outweigh the cons?

I really don't know...

kyochan• 17 years ago

"Do we have a right to be anonymous online?"

No. Not a right, especially when performing constitutionally-protected actions. I don't believe people should be required to identify themselves online, but I do believe that people who post anonymously should expect to be exposed eventually.

A better question would be whether legal channels should be used in the exposure of an anonymous person.

I believe so only if all other option are exhausted.

"Do the pros outweigh the cons?"

Yes, but only in place where free speech is not protected by the state.

aston• 17 years ago

I think the defendants of this case deserve a lot more sympathy than they're getting. The types of remarks you make when you're an anonymous dude on a message board of only marginal repute are not the same types of remarks you make when your name and identity are known.

There's an argument for removing the ability to be anonymous, but I think it's pretty much superior to allow people to hide their identity, but take their statements with all of the doubt that you would an anonymous, gossipy rumor. Trolls will be trolls, and the best thing to do is ignore them, not try to out them and ruin their professional lives.

time_management5• 17 years ago

I would remark that the punishment of the defendants has been uneven and had more to do with whose identities were recoverable than who did anything wrong. About half the defendants were people who made one off-hand comment (e.g. "Get in line") and are now suffering extremely disproportionate consequences. Ciolli (Great Teacher Onizuka) didn't even take part in this behavior at all-- he was an outed lawyer-- and he lost his job over this. This smacks of opportunistic target-seeking.

On the other hand, posters like Pauliewalnuts, lonelyvirgin, and :D bordered on being sociopathic and I feel like those guys are getting what was coming to them. I also think there's an enormous difference between, for example, expressing desire to have sex with someone (locker-room banter) and making jokes about becoming forceful with that person, which most women would take as a threat.

time_management5• 17 years ago

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When anonymous attackers went after two Yale law students, they struck back

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