Public shaming becomes a disturbing trend on the web

I’m sure everyone is aware of the very public fall from grace of Brian Williams, the news anchor on NBC. By now his story has followed an all too familiar pattern: a past transgression, a public apology, the hue and cry on the internet, the attempts to hold on, abandonment by colleagues, dismissal by an employer who finds further support untenable, ignominious disgrace. We’ve seen it all before.

The integrity of people in the public eye, and the trust they deserve, is something that could be debated, but that is not the subject of this post. I am more concerned with the way in which the collective voices of the web seem poised and ready to tear down anyone wounded by indiscretion or past mistake.

I recently read an article in the NY Times Sunday Magazine that told a story that is even more harrowing than Mr. Williams’. It’s the story of Justine Sacco, whose single offensive tweet – it was racial in nature, and an attempt to be funny about something that wasn’t funny – led to consequences that I believe are far out of proportion to the stupid mistake that began it all. I will not recap the story here – and I urge you strongly to read the Times article now and then come back here to continue – but it is one of many cases in recent years in which the collective internet hive mind (to use Jaron Lanier’s phrase) exhibits a ganging up, bullying behavior on a massive scale. It’s Lord of the Flies magnified worldwide.

The Times calls this pattern an ‘online shaming’ and most disturbing to me is the gleeful nature with which the crowd piles on and brings down an individual. In my opinion, anyone who delights in inflicting this kind of suffering, no matter how much of it may be warranted, is at best a bully and at worst a sadist. Justine deserved to be reprimanded for her insensitive tweet, but she did not deserve to have her life ruined. I do not exaggerate. The chain of events included public humiliation, abandonment by friends, a massive amount of venomous public criticism by thousands of people who didn’t know her, dismissal from her job, loss of her career, and numerous death threats. There is such a thing as the punishment fitting the crime, and the punishment that she (and many others in similar cases) experienced, is far beyond what was warranted by the cause. Who deserves death threats because of a tweet?

A few years back I wrote a piece about a controversy surrounding Cooks Source magazine, and the editor there who was so ignorant of copyright law that she thought all material on the internet was automatically in the public domain and free for the taking. Her error should have earned her reprimand, criticism and perhaps a civil penalty – but not the horrific response by self-appointed, mostly anonymous web vigilantes who hounded her, her publication and its advertisers, in a campaign to put Cooks Source out of business, which they did. The very obvious visceral pleasure the mob took in this bullying was disturbing and repulsive, as I wrote then, and again I am not exaggerating. Since that time, however, as the Times piece this week shows, this behavior has only become more common. Today, an insensitive post, tweet or email, done in a thoughtless moment – admit it, we all do this – can bring massive consequences, which the originator becomes unable to control or counteract. Lives and careers can be ruined by a careless thought; I think this is out of all proportion of what is right or fair.

If you think that the lesson of all these stories is to be careful what you say on line, I’d probably understand. But I’d also tell you you are completely wrong. The lesson is to guard against the digital lynch mob, and to resist the urge to join in when all around you are kicking someone who’s down. You weren’t a bully in school, were you? So why be one on line. We all like to be with the majority, but on the web the crowd isn’t always right, or nice, or respectable. Sometimes it’s repulsive.

Public shaming – think of putting transgressors in the stocks in the town square – is a punishment fit for a different century and we should not bring it into this one with web tools and online anonymity that make it even more vicious, damaging and long-lasting than it ever was then.

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If you haven't read the Times article about Justine Sacco, read it now.

Editor, ignorant of copyright law, cooks up a controversy

I can’t ignore the current controversy surrounding Cooks Source magazine (and web site) and copyright law on the web. There are two huge issues here, only one of which is getting the attention it deserves. The issues should be examined dispassionately; unfortunately ‘dispassion’ (if I can coin that word) appears to have left the building.

If you’ve missed the controversy du jour, the facts, briefly are these: Monica Gaudio, a blogger on the Gode Cookery web site, discovered that a post she wrote in 2005 (about the history of apple pie, no less, and it’s a fascinating story) had been lifted, word for word, by Cooks Source magazine and posted to their web site. Both print article and web posting credited Gaudio, but she had never been contacted, or her permission asked for. When she contacted Cooks Source, she was told by the editor there, Judith Griggs, (here comes the controversy) that anything posted online was in the public domain anyway and was not covered by copyright protection.

Since Griggs' reply has been posted all over the web, I have to repeat it here:

"But honestly Monica, the Web is considered 'public domain' and you should be happy we just didn't 'lift' your whole article and put someone else's name on it!... If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than [it] was originally.... For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain… We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me... ALWAYS for free!"

So that’s the first part of the story. Griggs is wrong of course. Material on the web is not in the public domain; it is covered by copyright law like any other original material. Using it without permission is plagiarism, like it would be if it existed in any other medium. Cut and paste may be easy, but that doesn’t make it okay. In another post, Griggs claims to have been doing this for ‘three decades’ so I don’t know if that makes her ignorance harder to understand or perhaps easier. But anyway, you get the point.

But that’s only Act One of this drama. The second act began as Twitter and the blogosphere lit up with netizens in full fury. Gaudio posted the exchange above on her own blog and the story went viral: attacks on Griggs and her web site followed. At full fury, thousands of posts, tweets etc. flamed Cooks Source and Griggs personally. Things had, within a day, turned decidedly ugly. The mob was on the march.

Take a look at the Cooks Source FaceBook page and you’ll see what I mean. The nicest posts are mocking and critical; the worst are mean and nearly venomous. In addition to the flames, Griggs and Cooks Source have been satirized, with bogus versions of each now at large on FaceBook and Twitter in parody form. If you search for this controversy, it’s hard to know now what is original and what is satire.

When the flaming started, Griggs made a flippant attempt to apologize, but it only showed that she still didn’t get it and therefore only made matters worse. By now Griggs, posting on the Cooks Source FaceBook page, has been reduced to alternating between pleading to be left alone and threatening to report the ‘hackers’ to the FCC (!). Perhaps not surprisingly, her pleadings have only served to incite the mob further.

There are so many ways to look at this issue. I’m the last person to defend Griggs’ wrong-headed interpretation of the way IP ownership and plagiarism works on the web. She’s dead wrong in her actions and her thinking, and needs to be told so. But I’m also the last person to participate in an online lynching, which is what this has turned into.

Griggs and her team probably work on a shoestring, and get paid accordingly. Their foodie magazine is a freebie confined to ‘western New England’, with a circulation of less than 30,000, supported by advertising. (Incidentally, the mob has turned on the advertisers as well, in an attempt to put the whole enterprise out of business.) That Griggs is (or at least was) ignorant of copyright law is now well established. That she is careless, condescending and snooty, is also hard to deny. The voice of the crowd was right to correct her. But when is enough enough?

The current wisdom is that the web can police itself, and the crowd will drive out unacceptable behavior. But the tyranny of the majority and the rule of the mob presents an ugly dark side to the wide open, lightly regulated environment of the web. Persecution, mass-flaming and piling-on should not be condoned. I’ve posted about this subject before; cyber bullying has terrible consequences that poison the on-line world for all of us.

I’m not sure which part of this story disturbs me more: the flippant ignorance about copyright law, which (make no mistake) many besides Griggs share – or the aftermath, in which gleefully malicious mob behavior inflicts punishment far greater than what was justified by the original offense.

(Many tech and media sites are covering this story. If you want all the gory details, I recommend the coverage by MSNBC and CNET.)