Online Abuse and Harassment: Where are the Rules?

Posted on May 23, 2008 by JoeDuck

I’m reposting from my WebGuild post about the Ariel Waldman case where she is accusing Twitter of failing to enforce their Terms of Service over a what Ariel says was a case of very bad harassment and abuse on Twitter:

Are there appropriate standards of conduct for social network communication or does anything go in the wild west of social networks, twitter, and blogging?

Ariel Waldman was the target of an online “stalker” who posted abusive comments about her via Twitter. She’s understandably upset about the harrassment and posted a long note about getting no satisfaction from Twitter despite responses including a call with the Twitter CEO, who seemed to feel the case fell outside of Twitter’s responsibility.

I’m trying to get Twitter’s response to Ariel because I have a feeling there actions may hinge on a couple of twists that complicate what at first appears to be a clear cut case of putting free speech – which should be protected at great cost, above threat speech – which is a plague on the online world and should be harshly policed by the online and offline community including law enforcement.

The first issue is that Ariel blogs about some very “emotionally charged” topics with sexually charged language (though I saw no sign of what I would call abusive language in a quick scan of her blogs). However Twitter may be thinking that to censor comments about her or her topics while keeping Ariel’s own stuff online would not be in keeping with some sort of fairness standard (I agree this would be a weak argument based on Ariel’s description of the abuse).

The more relevant twist is that Ariel is the community manager of Pownce, a social microblogging site that is very much in direct competition with Twitter. Unless Ariel is certain that Pownce would handle this situation very differently from how Twitter is handling it she really needs to explain why this is calling out Twitter so powerfully rather than making more general statements about how the very lax online abuse standard are threatening the online social fabric.

This problem very powerfully emerged last year when Kathy Sierra, a prominent and excellent blogger, quit blogging entirely after several death threats against her. Although most of the community expressed outrage an alarming number of prominent bloggers suggested that free speech issues trumped the death threats, and came irresponsibly close to supporting what they seemed to see as the right of harrassers to threaten violence against others.

So it is important to make clear here that my personal view (which is not necessarily that of WebGuild) is that Twitter is wrong as are any social networks that allow harassment of community members. Whatever tiny advantages we might gain in free speech from an “anything goes” policy are washed away as debate is stifled under the threat of the virtual violence turning into real violence.

Update: Twitter Replies to Ariel

In their reply at GetSatisfaction, a customer resolution website, Twitter suggests that this case might be viewed differently by people if the comment stream was available. Presumably both Ariel and Twitter have a copy, so it should be published in the interests of fairness to everybody concerned.

Update 2: Ariel’s Mom Checks in at her blog:

Mom Says:
May 22nd, 2008 at 10:31 pm

Yes, this is Ariel’s real mother. Those of you who are easily manipulated by media driven celebrity conspiracy theories or actually believe there is no such thing as integrity any longer will ignore this post. Too bad for you.

I am not here to comment on twitter, TOS, freedom of speech, the “sexiness” of ShakeWellBeforeUse or if Ariel is a c—. If I said she wasn’t, you wouldn’t believe me anyway.

I CAN attest to one thing. It IS a fact Ariel’s stalker has been after her for over 3 years beginning in her home town—before she had a high profile on the web. I have seen the physical evidence and know it to be threatening. Ariel did nothing to initiate this situation, the person in question is mentally unbalanced and deeply insecure. The person found out where she lived and made it known to her. Ariel has done everything within her power (talking to the person and friends of the person, police, legal advice, adjustment of lifestyle) to defuse the situation all to no avail. I had thought when she moved to the city, these attacks would end, but they have not. There is more than mere name calling going on. There is a history of vindictive harrassment. Whatever else you think about how she is handling it is your opinion, but she did NOT make this up.

Since I have known Ariel all her life I can tell you one thing. She plays by the rules. She does not manipulate people or situations for her own gain. And she is too smart to screw up her own reputation as a consultant in social media to try and play competing services against each other. All speculation on that account is ridiculous.

And Mom to Ariel: you could have told me you were going to blog this rather than let me randomly find out about it on my own.

Earthquakes and Cyclones are a small part of a much more tragic story

Posted on May 13, 2008 by JoeDuck

Some would say it’s cruel or inappropriate to suggest that the big tragedies are the daily death toll from disease and malnutritioon even more than the horrible scenes we’ve been seeing on TV from Burma/Myanmar and China as a result of the Cyclone and the earthquake that will take between 100,000 and 150,000 lives when all the reports are in.

However I’m compelled to point that out because TV news and our own human inadequacies at processing math and information mean that the silent catastrophes of easily preventable diseases – which kill some 20,000-30,000 people per day – are the real catastrophes on this planet yet they go largely unreported and ignored because we focus our attention on the spectacular problems rather than the more pressing ones or interesting ones. You don’t have to trivialiize the tragic loss of life in violent conflicts or natural disasters to recognize that there is a *far greater* loss of life in the day to day problems we largely ignore. No, these do not “keep those populations in check” as some poorly informed folks suggest. On the contrary rising the standard of living is one of the surest ways to reduce birth rates barring the draconian type of approach taken in China with the “one family one child” policy which has also worked.

What would work to a solution to the real tragedies? First, we need to do a little math and recognize that the daily death tolls from preventable, solvable problems are huge compared to the death tolls from the things many people worry a lot about yet cannot influence much (Middle East Conflicts) if at all (Earthquakes).

After recognizing we can save millions of people *monthly* from a shift in resources we need to view national security in broader terms, recognizing that a greater measure of global stability – the primary goal of our US military projection throughout the world – would be more easily attained with strategic spending on simple and preventable education and disease programs combined with a modest marketing program to make sure those assisted recognize who the good guys really are. Currently the USA spends a subtantial amount (though it is tiny compared to our capacity) helping fight poverty the third world. Yet we get little if any credit for this. Unfortunate because this does not inspire more of the type of assistance that creates global win-win situation where people can thrive and the US can help maintain global stability at a fraction of the cost of military approaches.

Why aren’t others seeing this? US politics have created a crisis of economic and military stupidity. Liberals insist – naively and with little research to back them up – that globalized corporate capitalism hurts the poor more than it helps them. There are regional exceptions, but if you look around you note that where there are multinational skyscrapers and multinational influence (New York, Hong Kong) there is … a lot more prosperity and a lot less poverty than where global business is banned (Myanmar, North Korea).

Meanwhile most conservatives remain sadly and stupidly hypocritical when it comes to funding our bloated military, which currently accounts for well over half of all global spending. People who should know how to balance a checkbook abandon all fiscal reason in an ego and emotionally driven fervor to fund every weapon they can get their hands on, often leaving veterans to fend for themselves where this type of spending is clearly an essential obligation of the country to support those who have served.

COMMENTS are VERY WELCOME, even if you think I’m totally full of sh** on this!

Breaking News or Broken News?

Posted on May 6, 2008 by JoeDuck

This silly Reuters article suggests that a recent Twitter episode suggests that Twitter has attained some significance as a news mechanism. I’m a huge fan of Twitter and use it regularly and think it’s representative of a lot of interesting online social trends, but (unlike normal blogging) Twitter microblogging is hardly a threat to journalism and probably will never be a threat.

The scoop was that Dave Winer asked on Twitter about an “Explosion” in Virginia and the chatter stream (aka Tweets), eventually led to the correct answer – a tiny earthquake in Falls Church VA. More important than the fact this tiny event was hardly “breaking news”, it was very broken news and probably worried a lot of people until the “explosion” became a tiny rumble.

Again, Twitter is great, but let’s not go stupid here and start thinking Twitter represents a radical restructuring of our information universe.

Internet Ironies

Posted on April 24, 2008 by JoeDuck

I thought it was kind of funny when the head architect of social site Twitter, hugely under fire for failing to scale up the application properly as it grew, was giving a talk at the ongoing Web 2.0 Conference about scaling up big websites.

But today’s news that Jeff Pulver of PulverMedia has resigned…..from PulverMedia, has got to be one of the best examples of the crazily ironic internet world. It’s also annoying that prominent bloggers are now often kept from writing about their own stories by complex contractual obligations they take on when going big time. It’s enough to make you abandon all those silly A list bloggers for …. good old fashioned regular guy and gal bloggers.

I wonder if he’ll start up a new company and if so what you gonna call it? NotPulverMedia.com?

Clinton Wins Pennsylvania

Posted on April 22, 2008 by JoeDuck

The networks aren’t calling it but I can because you can get the results from the CNN exit polls with a little extra math:

Based on the exit polls, Clinton will win 52% to 48% and that close margin means this is almost certainly going to the convention.

Clinton Wins Pennsylvania

The networks are not calling it yet but the exit polling makes it clear Hilary Clinton will win the Pennsylvania Primary.

CNN’s Exit poll data indicates the results will be as follows:

Clinton Male Vote %: .42 x .47 = 20%
Clinton Female Vote %: .58 x .55 = 32%

Clinton Total vote: 52%

Obama Male: .42 x .53 = 22%
Obama Female: .58 x .44 = 26%

Obama Total Vote 48%

Update: With 99% now in Clinton won 55% to 45%. This is enough of a margin that no candidate can really argue for any clear democratic consensus, and clearly the convention could be a very lively event.

Money is now a key factor in that Obama has lots and Clinton does not.

Craigslist hoax computer found and taken by police

Posted on March 29, 2008 by JoeDuck

Jacksonville Oregon:

Local media is reporting they have found and taken the computer that was probably used to post the prank Craigslist hoax advertisement that led to a large property theft in Jacksonville about a week ago. However no charges have been filed yet in the case, which has received much national attention.

Homeowner Robert Salisbury had thousands in property, including his horse, taken when a hoax listing appeared last Saturday telling people everything on the property was up for grabs. Incredibly even when Salisbury returned home to find about 30 people rummaging through his things, he could not get several of them to stop. They simply insisted the listing online gave them the right to take the property.

The IP address of the bogus listing is under subpoena from Craigslist who will be providing this to the Jacksonville Sheriff. The Sheriff is currently examining the hard drive of the computer for more evidence in this case.

Medford Mail Tribune Reports:
http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080328/NEWS/803280336

KGW Reports:
http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_032408_news_craigslist_hoax.1ffb2c9c.html

CNET SWOT Analysis

Posted on March 26, 2008 by JoeDuck

CNET is back in the news as today brings layoffs and ominous internal memos so I thought I’d put out this CNET SWOT analysis I did over at the Techdirt Insight Community not so long ago:

CNET Mini SWOT

CNET Strengths:

Brand awareness and brand respect. CNET has been one of technologies most recognizable and respected brands for many years, and continues to maintain the high respect of the technology community.

Writers. CNETs technology writing and analysis is recognized as some of the best in technology. Unbiased reviews and authoritative articles from seasoned technology journalists are the mainstay of CNETs content.

Editorial staff. CNETs reputation for editorial and quality control is unsurpassed in the industry.

Dan Farber promotion. Dan Farber is one of technologies most informed and seasoned professionals. As a blogger who is extensively familiar with and actively participating in social media Dan was a great choice to help guide CNET into a more aggressive social networking posture.

Huge internet traffic. CNET remains one of the most visited news sites on the internet.

High revenues with potential for high profitability. CNET’s revenues are strong despite significant earnings declines in the past year. Zacks analysis suggests a modest profit downturn in the coming year, but CNET is still generating very substantial revenues and some profits. Under a JANA acquisition scenario the aggressive management for profit could boost earnings significantly.

CNET Weaknesses:

Labor intensive content production. CNET’s quality writers and editors are her blessing and her curse. Writers cost money and good writers, collectively, cost a lot of money. Blogging and the social media revolution have led to an online environment that creates a tidal wave of quality tech-focused content every day at very low average cost per article.

News delays. Although CNET remains very current, it simply cannot always compete with the 24/7/365 blogging community that is posting (and increasingly scooping) CNET and other media outlets when technology news breaks. Again, the editorial standards force CNET to delay where bloggers and online journals will report first and ask questions later. The practice is questionable from a journalism point of view, but usually it is just fine for advertisers and certainly helps with traffic generation as the early reports often garner the most page views.

Earnings declines. CNETs earnings are down significantly, placing huge pressure on the company to cut costs and increase monetization for content. CNETs early success may have led them to incorrectly assume they would remain unchallenged in the tech news space where they are under pressure from both bigger players like Yahoo and smaller players like TechCrunch.

CNET Opportunities:

Socialism! CNET’s attempts to build an online CNET-centric community at the website have been modest and in many ways have failed. With a sterling brand and reputation, CNET is in a great position to leverage the existing tech-centric user base into a number of community endeavors. One small example would be to create more niche CNET communities online and then evangelize these communities via CNETs advertising as well as Facebook, Myspace, and other social media powerhouses. Even more powerful would be to facilitate the creation of much more reader-driven content. For example make registration for CNET simpler with just an email signup and encourage far more guest articles. Digg style rankings for CNET articles would be another positive step in this direction.

Be more like TechCrunch. Mike Arrington has brilliantly leveraged the fast pace of internet journalism, modest journalism standards, advertisement flexibility, and most importantly the powers of social media. Where TechCrunch initially produced content at a fraction of the cost of CNET using freelance writing and little office overhead, it also distributed and monetized this content in more powerful ways such as massive emailings and very aggressive social media participation and real socializing. Once again however CNETs high journalistic standards provide some barriers here.

JANA board coup: If JANA succeeds in the fight to change the direction of CNET, and this appears likely, a new focus on monetization and innovation will lead to a stronger and more viable CNET. Unfortunately profitability is probably going to call for a reduction in journalistic standards and quality coverage, but from a company health perspective CNET is likely to benefit from a leaner, faster, broader, but more superficial approach to tech news coverage.

CNET Threats:

Diminished advertising revenues. The coming recession may not hit online advertising as hard as some other sectors but online advertising spending growth is likely to slow in the coming year and possibly even go down. Financial sectors, for example, were huge spenders last year and may be unable to continue spending at the same levels due to the housing crisis.

Blogging and the social media revolution. These represent a substantial threat to CNETs long term prospects and profitability. Blogs and non-traditional media coverage are generating huge volumes of quality content every day, and technology focused content is especially abundant since blogging’s early adopters tended to be technology enthusiasts. Bloggers are increasingly respected as quality journalists and analysts who in some cases have more expertise than the technology journalists that are covering the same story, product, or events. Yet the average cost to produce a blogged story is effectively zero as many bloggers are writing simply for the fun of coverage and the internet soapbox. Monetization of blogs is also becoming easier and more lucrative in the form of Google Adsense per click advertising as well as projects like Federated Media which match publishers to advertisers – a service for which advertisers are increasingly willing to pay a high premium.

A Google aquisition of CNET?

Despite the reasonable assumption that CNET has significant potential for a valuation far beyond current capitalization of approximately 1 billion, I consider a Google aquisition *unlikely*. Google’s actions and stated intention for many years have been to concentrate on content *monetization* and avoid content production. Also, Google stresses the value of machine scalability which is not compatible with the labor intensive content and editorial style of CNET.

That said, I think that CNET and Google cultures would be fairly compatible. Not because they are similar but because they would have a high degree of mutual respect as leaders in their respective fields. Where Google is relaxed, fast paced, and extremely innovative CNET culture appears to be more formal, professional, and along the lines of a traditional journalism environment with attention to detail, high journalistic standards, and an older workforce. This is probably an acceptable recipe for a comfortable working relationship.

CNET Linkage:JANA Board Fight:
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080107/20080107005660.html?.v=1

Zacks YHOO summary:
http://biz.yahoo.com/zacks/080222/11619.html?.v=1

Digg for sale! Again. This time it’s for real. Maybe.

Posted on March 7, 2008 by JoeDuck

TechCrunch is reporting that Digg is likely to get sold soon – probably to Google and probably for about $200,000,000. Good for Kevin Rose and the VC folks, but I’d like to know from the key Diggers if they’ll feel any loyalty to the new owners or to the project. Also, do they think they are owed more than … zero… on this deal?

Social sites do offer their participants something of value = participation and platform – but are there “losers” in these equations?

How do the high level participants who have put in thousands of hours and made the site what it is feel about these cash outs?

I’m wondering how often distribution of equity during the *liquidity* event properly reflects the building of equity. Entrepreneurial capitalism correctly asssumes you need to highly reward risk to get folks to take business risks and innovate. But as Mike Arrington has noted entrepreneurs have a value system that appears to actually assign a high value the thrills and chills of the experience. Thus to get optimal production and innovation it appears to me we need to pay “deeper” on these big internet deals. In the case of a YouTube, DIGG, or Facebook I’d find a way to reward those down the food chain in some proportion to their contribution to the enterprise. It’s possible that these rewards would be small enough that I’m wrong to think this matters much in the overall equation of optimizing the capitalist experience, but even a modest reward would brand the mega deals as “fairer” than simply a situation where fat cats effectively exploit self-motivated worker bees who have generated the user content and social networking that the market values so highly right now.

Joe Duck

Have Blog. Will Travel. Vaccinate!

Category Archives: news

Earthquakes and Cyclones are a small part of a much more tragic story

Breaking News or Broken News?

Internet Ironies

Clinton Wins Pennsylvania

Clinton Wins Pennsylvania

Craigslist hoax computer found and taken by police

CNET SWOT Analysis