Yale Students’ Lawsuit Unmasks Anonymous Trolls, Opens Pandora’s Box
Image by altopower via FlickrYale Students’ Lawsuit Unmasks Anonymous Trolls, Opens Pandora’s Box.
Only at a law school in the United States can something like this gain any kind of momentum. The liberal1 community’s tendency to over-analyze an issue has a way of removing them from the mode of using good common sense. Unfortunately, the liberal media picks up stuff like this and adds kindling to the already well-fanned flames.
Unless you’re a technological recluse, you know a “troll” when you see one. They exist with the sole purpose of writing outrageous things to provoke a response, while blanketed in the protection of anonymity. They’re pretty much all the same; the have the vocabulary of an adult but write with the sophistication of a 3rd grader. They’re easy to spot, and equally easy to dismiss for what they are: morons.
In this day of forums, blogs, tweets and shout-boxes, just about every piece of content out on the web has the capacity to be commented on by the masses at large. Trolls have become an unavoidable part of this landscape, similar to to highway billboards. You know they’re there, but you quickly train yourself to completely ignore their presence.
With that in mind, is there really a case here? I find it hard to believe that anyone with a shred of intelligence would actually pay attention to anything these posters had to say. A top-flight executive making 6-7 figures isn’t going to base his hiring prerogatives on the word of some forum board poster that goes by the handle of “PaulieWalnuts” or the “The Ayatollah of Rock-n-Rollah”. If that is true, the allegations of “losing prestigious job opportunities” by the plaintiffs becomes somewhat outlandish.
So do the plaintiffs have a grievance? Sure. Some of the posts were borderline threatening, and sufficient cause for concern. Was the forum admin at fault in any way? Yes and no. He isn’t responsible for what other people write. However, I don’t know of any forum board that doesn’t have the typical warning message to its users: “watch your mouth, offensive or harmful posts will be removed and the poster banned”. Posts that became threatening should have been removed. Should the forum admin get sued for not removing them? No. Should the board be shut down? Probably.
Bottom lines:
Freedom of Speech gives you the right to speak your opinions or express yourself, NOT to make threats or slanderous statements. To give an example: Find a police officer and threaten him/her in some way, and then claim freedom of speech. You won’t get very far.
Web anonymity isn’t as anonymous as you might think and what you do today can come back and haunt you years after the fact.
Forum admins should exercise caution, regardless of what the laws states. When issues like this come up, you are going to get a phone call regardless of whether you are at fault or not. The smart thing is to do some CYA work.
Finally, at the end of the day, trolls are morons who exhibit their intelligence with every ill-conceived word they write, and anyone with a brain knows this.
- (Note: when I say liberal, I am referring to ultra-liberals. Both conservatives and liberals have their own little extreme splinter factions. An ultra-conservative is just as dangerous as an ultra-liberal. For my part, I regard myself as something of a moderate) ↩
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