Internet anonymity…isn’t always
Just ask the guy who got fired from his job after a journalist/blogger called his employer to rat him out for leaving vulgar comments.
Ars goes into the technical details fairly well (as one would expect), noting quite accurately just what sort of information Wordpress records about each submitted comment and the person submitting it. This information, I should hasten to add, can all be considered to by public information; it is openly broadcast by your web browser, good reader, unless you’re using some kind of spoofing utility (which the overwhelming majority of Internet users aren’t).
Of course, Ars also nails the trust issues involved in this mess:
There are many things that are disturbing about this situation, starting with [Kurt] Greenbaum’s apparent willingness to brag about it publicly—are we five years old here? “Ha ha, someone posted naughty words and I got him fired!” There’s also the question of whether Greenbaum has done (or would have done) the same for other vulgar comments posted on the site—surely this isn’t the first time someone has used a NSFW term in the comments of a story. “Of all the comments that you guys choose to ‘narc on,’ for lack of a better term, you chose one that was actually kind of funny [...] Vulgar, yes, but nowhere near as offensive as some of the racist stuff I’ve seen of here,” one commenter named Karen wrote.
How does he decide what’s a tattle-to-the-employer comment versus a merely annoying one? We tried to ask Greenbaum these questions but he declined to comment.
Then there’s the question of whether pulling this move and then telling everyone about it was really worth throwing the paper’s integrity into question—while other newspapers are fighting tooth and nail to protect the identity of their anonymous commenters, the Post-Dispatch has proven that it will reveal that info with little prodding. If commenters on a story can’t trust that he won’t report them to their employers if they say something he doesn’t like, what about sources? It might give someone—say, if there was inside information involved—pause that Greenbaum might be indiscreet with that information as well. Whatever the end result, as evidenced by the comments on his blog post, he has certainly hurt the relationship the newspaper had with some of its readers.
Left unraised is the freedom of speech issue at the heart of the matter: a man was fired for leaving vulgar comments on a blog post.
Don’t get me wrong: I find “single word, [vulgar expressions] for a part of a woman’s anatomy” to be highly distasteful, and would certainly think twice about associating too closely — or in social circumstances — with someone who thought too highly of that sort of “humour.” By the same token, it’s nothing you wouldn’t hear at a performance of The Vagina Monologues, so I wonder at whether if at least some of the “outrage” over the use of the term on Mr. Greenbaum’s part is not…shall we say…manufactured?
We’re seeing stuff like this more and more often, and it’s bloody unfortunate. It’s one thing to delete a comment, or to delete multiple identical comments from the same asshat. (Comment trolls are a fact of Internet life; grow thicker skin, or learn how to deal with trolls. Or both.) It’s a completely different — and disgustingly unacceptable — thing to get someone fired because he left a comment on a blog, even a vulgar comment.
Not that I expect many, if any, of my readers are Post-Dispatch readers. Even so, if you feel so moved, here is Mr. Greenbaum’s blog, which you can visit to leave a strongly-but-politely worded email detailing your disgust at his abrogation of another man’s inalienable right to freedom of expression.
Even vulgar expression. Censorship…is censorship, and Mr. Greenbaum is guilty of it.
I started blogging back in 2004 -- in May, if the Wayback Machine is to be believed. Not that I remember the exact day. To be honest, I didn't take it that seriously then; it was a fun distraction, but nothing more.
That all changed, I think, once the Danish cartoons were published, and the assault on the right to freedom of expression became very visible. With the recent issues in Canada concerning the "human rights" commissions, the gravity of the matter has only increased, and my interest in blogging has increased right along with it.
I used to blog at a domain called Time Immortal, but it seemed to be the right time for a change -- there's been a lot of that in my life of late. Hence this blog: a fresh start, and proof positive that I won't shut up even if I get shut down once in a while.
November 19th, 2009 at 12:23 am
Hello Friend,
You are absolutely correct!
Anonymity needs to be respected and everybody has an equal right to it. The very fact that the comment (even if vulgar) was anonymous left a scope for the readers to assume it was an idiot, unlike a posting that would have for sure established a certain real world link between people, and identify there was something.
In that sense, I will say that it was a decision (the decision to fire) was taken only with an assumption that anonymity will be unhealthy. Better if they could realize that it was just a channel to vent frustrations, also giving scope for free speech.
– Vinay Chaganti