In a post earlier this week, I discussed Randy Cohen’s “guideline” for anonymous blogging. Specifically, Cohen argued in a recent New York Times piece that, “The effects of anonymous posting have become so baleful that it should be forsworn unless there is a reasonable fear of retribution. By posting openly, we support the conditions in [...]
Randy Cohen, who pens “The Ethicist” column for The New York Times Magazine, wrote this week about the “skank case,” or the controversy surrounding the recent legal outing for an anonymous blogger who called fashion model Liskula Cohen a “psychotic, lying, whoring … skank.” Thanks to a recent court decision, we now know that the [...]
The Wired article (“Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network’s Plan to Dominate the Internet — and Keep Google Out“) I discussed yesterday touched on another issue near & dear to my heart (besides the importance of smarter advertising): the future of online anonymity. The article lays out Facebook’s “4-Step Plan for Online Domination,” which involves “colonizing” the [...]
Doug Feaver, a former Washington Post reporter and editor, has published a very interesting editorial today entitled “Listening to the Dot-Commenters.” In the piece, Feaver discusses his personal change of heart about “the anonymous, unmoderated, often appallingly inaccurate, sometimes profane, frequently off point and occasionally racist reader comments that washingtonpost.com allows to be published at [...]
Anonymity, Reader Comments & Section 230
by Adam Thierer on April 9, 2009 · 13 comments
Doug Feaver, a former Washington Post reporter and editor, has published a very interesting editorial today entitled “Listening to the Dot-Commenters.” In the piece, Feaver discusses his personal change of heart about “the anonymous, unmoderated, often appallingly inaccurate, sometimes profane, frequently off point and occasionally racist reader comments that washingtonpost.com allows to be published at [...]