An outing for trolls and sockpuppeteers

by John Q on March 18, 2008

We’ve had a few more offensive trolls and sockpuppeteers than usual (that is, more numerous and more offensive) recently, and it seems to be time to make an explicit statement of our policy in this respect. You can read the comments policy in the left-hand sidebar. We’ve just added the following:

We respect the preference of many genuine commenters for pseudonymity and will protect their privacy. However, this respect does not extend to those who abuse pseudonymity to launch personal attacks on posters or other commenters, post racist or sexist comments or employ sockpuppets. We will, if appropriate, publish the identity of such abusers and share their identifying information with other sites.

There’s nothing new here, and we’ve acted on this policy in the past. But it seems like a good time to spell it out.

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03.20.08 at 2:46 pm

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1

Kris 03.18.08 at 5:44 am

Hear hear!

2

MR. Bill 03.18.08 at 10:09 am

In a sense, your popularity with the poor devils and their need to abuse your forum is a index of your standing.

3

Brett Bellmore 03.18.08 at 11:00 am

Well, there’s a threat I have no reason to be concerned with! LOL!

4

Marko Attila Hoare 03.18.08 at 11:59 am

Excellent – well done for taking a stand, comrades.

5

Brownie 03.18.08 at 12:55 pm

I’m a bit concerned by “or otherwise breach the comments policy described above.”

Are you saying that you reserve the right to expose commenters who, for example, you regard as having gone off-topic or whom you suspect of wanting to derail a thread?

I have no problem with exposing the identity of commenters who are guilty of exposing/trying to expose others, but I’m uncomfortable with doing so for any transgrssion of comments policy.

In extreme cases, exposure of anonymous commenters can result in loss of employment for those commenters (or at least professional difficulties) and however annoying trolls can sometimes be, exposure for anything other that the gravest of offences strikes me as disproportionate and manifestly unjust.

But it’s your blog…

6

Steve LaBonne 03.18.08 at 1:06 pm

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you — Nobody — Too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise — you know!

How dreary — to be — Somebody!
How public — like a Frog —
To tell one’s name — the livelong June —
To an admiring Bog!

7

Sk 03.18.08 at 2:22 pm

Tht’s grt nws. gr wth yr ssssmnt f th st. n th pst rgrdng th dth f Wllm F. Bckly, fr nstnc, t ws n nndng ltny f vtprtv flnss (hpng h rts n hll, htrd, ccstns f vl, wlcmng hs dth tc tc). G bck nd rvw t nd s fr yrslf. Prhps y cn rstr sm prfssnlsm nd dgnty t ths st.

8

Dingbat 03.18.08 at 2:38 pm

Your policy can be what it is, but you might, as a deterrent to such behavior, rephrase this: “Mail (will not be published) (required)” both to eliminate contradiction and to deter such behavior in future.

9

Dingbat 03.18.08 at 2:39 pm

Yikes; I hope redundancy isn’t against the comments policy!

10

M. Gordon 03.18.08 at 3:42 pm

Sk, I don’t think the “personal attacks” referred to in the policy are meant to cover William F. Buckley. But, who knows, maybe he was an anonymous commenter on CT!

11

abb1 03.18.08 at 4:06 pm

What do you mean by “identifying information” – email and IP? Or do you actually intend to hire a detective and obtain and publish this person’s name, phone number, address, employment record, marital and extra-marital history, etc?

Just curious.

12

voyou 03.18.08 at 6:50 pm

It sounds as if someone makes ‘stupid or irrelevant’ comments, the powers that be will publicize your IP address. Very Orwellian.

An excellent illustration of the now almost complete meaninglessness of the term “Orwellian.”

13

abb1 03.18.08 at 7:05 pm

It’s not Orwellian, but the fella has a point. Why not just say: ‘we reserve the right to delete comments and ban commenters at our discretion.’ All there is to it.

14

Soullite 03.18.08 at 7:20 pm

This is sick and disgusting. I don’t care if you have the legal right to do this, it’s immoral and foolish to go down this road. At some point, you’ll out someone that nobody else thinks should have been outed. You’ll get so used to wielding this power, or some other front pager, that you’ll cross the line of decency you’re attempting to erect here.

Nobody is beyond corruption, and you’re a fool if you think you are. You’ll cross that line eventually, because it’s what people do. Lets hope you just rip apart your own site and not half the blogosphere when you do.

15

John Quiggin 03.18.08 at 8:25 pm

Brownie, I agree that that phrase “otherwise breach policy” was overly broad and have replaced it with an explicit reference to sockpuppeteers and racist/sexist comments, which was the original intention.

As a general response, if you don’t like the policy, or don’t trust us to implement it fairly, don’t comment here (or don’t write anything you wouldn’t write under your own name). I’d particularly extend this invitation to SK, whose post I’ve disemvowelled as extra encouragement. To be clear, SK is the kind of abusive commenter who may be subject to this policy in future.

Finally, Soullite, I had the feeling you had said something on this before. I checked and what you wrote was

File suit, get this guy’s real name, and turn his life into a fucking wreck. Show these people that the internet isn’t some place where they can assassinate peoples credibility with no response.

16

Nell 03.18.08 at 10:25 pm

And speaking of assassination, soullite advocated just that in a recent thread at Matt Yglesias’ blog — where the stated comments policy is never, apparently, enforced.

17

mq 03.18.08 at 10:51 pm

I agree with 5, and also with Abb1 (soullite seemed a little over the top). Why go out of your way to try and actively harm anonymous posters in their daily lives, instead of just banning them or their IP address? It seems out of proportion. That’s especially true since a lot of your posters are pretty thin-skinned, e.g. abb1’s banning from some threads. The definition of a racist or sexist comment, or a personal attack on a poster, is awfully elastic.

18

joseph duemer 03.18.08 at 11:00 pm

There are of course legitimate reasons for anonymity, but the “Don’t post anything here you wouldn’t publish under your own name” maxim puts the responsibility where it belongs.

19

Jonathan Mayhew 03.18.08 at 11:57 pm

I agree with Joseph. The internet would be a better place without so much anonymity. If you need to be anonymous, ask yourself why. To be nastier, less honest than you would under your own name?

20

Roy Belmont 03.19.08 at 1:08 am

It’s a noble thought, that honesty obtain throughout and evermore.
But it’s clear to anyone who’s paid attention over the last three or four years that CT has gradually adopted at least an informal policy of avoiding certain volatile issues completely. Walt&Mearsheimer for example – now you see them, now you don’t.
The assumption is it’s because volatile issues are magnets for dangerous repercussions, to professional academics whose real names and positions are easily available. A reasonable thing under the circumstances, it’s just a damned blog after all.
Not saying anything that might get you into trouble is just the next step up from anonymity. Call it passive anonymity.
At the same time, exposing your real true personal self to the yammering lugs that populate the comment threads at places like LGF is completely unproductive and could get downright ugly, depending on the skillz of those lugs and their keepers.
For careerists anonymity has no value unless subsequently claimed or made known, and for the self-protective and anxious majority it just makes it harder to censor and prosecute rogue citizens. So neither of those groups approve. Which is at least some of the appeal.
Thomas Paine’s pamphlets were unsigned and anonymous when they mattered most, as were some of Ben Franklin’s most controversial and effective public works.
Anonymity can abused, but then so can privilege.

21

Ragout 03.19.08 at 1:39 am

Well, I prefer to remain anonymous not only for professional reasons, but also because I’d rather that the people who send me anti-semitic hate mail don’t know where to find me.

So, am I safe from being outed if I avoid racism, sexism and sockpuppetry? Probably not. The only person I’ve seen outed on CT did none of these things. He made a half-joking statement that many CT commenters use “Zionist” as a euphemism for “Jew.” Several CT bloggers decided that he was calling all the site owners anti-Semites and outed him.

22

John Quiggin 03.19.08 at 2:10 am

Certainly, if you want to preserve your anonymity, “half-joking” accusations of anti-Semitism are a good example of what to avoid, as are weaselly justifications of the same.

23

Ragout 03.19.08 at 2:21 am

Are accusations of racism OK? I see them all the time on CT. That kind of thing sets a tone, and it’s no surprise that others adopt the same level of discourse.

24

Ragout 03.19.08 at 2:26 am

Anyway, John Quiggin, thanks for making your threats explicit. I take them seriously. Do, you know who I am? If you do, I’ll definitely stop posting on CT.

25

SG 03.19.08 at 3:09 am

it hardly seems that such a comment should go unnoticed, and what else to call it except racism?

26

Ragout 03.19.08 at 3:16 am

No, SG, I never said any such thing (“bloodthirsty psychos!”). But thanks for being so quick to demonstrate just how common unsubstantiated accusations of racism are on CT.

27

Righteous Bubba 03.19.08 at 3:23 am

He made a half-joking statement that many CT commenters use “Zionist” as a euphemism for “Jew.”

The thread still exists and it’s not quite as hapless an incident on the part of the commenter as your characterization would indicate.

28

swampcracker 03.19.08 at 3:29 am

Sometimes trolls can be useful to have around. They make silly garden ornaments; they are handy for scraping manure off boots; there should be one in every bathroom closet in case one runs out of toilet paper.

Sometimes trolls are sooo stupid they are downright amusing. Like the ones who pop up like whack-a-moles just to bother and annoy readers. I let my cats play with them.

29

Otto Pohl 03.19.08 at 5:24 am

I think it would be better if the blog just required all commenters to post under their real names. Really I have yet to see a decent argument for why academics refuse to blog under their own names. Usually when I see people blogging under fake names they doing things like praising the ethnic cleansing of the Sudeten Germans and the Palestinians. Nobody needs that type of hate speech protected by having the advocates refuse to take responsibility under their own names. Either have the courage to state your convictions under your own name or be quiet.

30

mr. steven crane 03.19.08 at 5:37 am

you can go ahead and expose me if and when i go trollish. i’m a college dropout working for single-digits an hour. what have i to lose?

31

Ragout 03.19.08 at 5:52 am

Usually when I see people blogging under fake names they doing things like praising the ethnic cleansing of the Sudeten Germans and the Palestinians.

Who specifically does this, Mr. “state your convictions or be quiet”? Who exactly supports ethnic cleansing? Name pseudonyms!

32

John Quiggin 03.19.08 at 6:18 am

Ragout (most obviously at #30), our desire not to deal with this kind of thing is one of the reasons why we’ve announced the policy above. As we appear to be agreed, if you don’t like the policy or its application, the appropriate response is not to comment.

Can I request no response to ragout’s provocations please.

33

mr. steven crane 03.19.08 at 6:19 am

comments are moderated now?

34

mr. steven crane 03.19.08 at 6:27 am

also: if ragout is such a jerk, how come his comments aren’t moderated but mine are? my reputation should be effectively zero, but you never know…

35

Roy Belmont 03.19.08 at 8:10 am

This is me not responding to ragout’s provocations.

36

abb1 03.19.08 at 8:30 am

If you need to be anonymous, ask yourself why.

I imagine there could be legitimate or at least semi-legitimate reasons. What if one comments from China, for example, or some place where one isn’t supposed to make any public political statements?

Not to mention that anonymity is pretty much the norm in the internets.

Maybe it’s those who feel that they need to use their real names are the ones who should ask themselves why.

37

Naadir Jeewa 03.19.08 at 8:48 am

Is this to do with being featured in The Guardian?

38

Ragout 03.19.08 at 10:21 am

if you don’t like the policy or its application, the appropriate response is not to comment

So I should shut up when I’m accused of racism, or when someone claims anonymous commenters generally support ethnic cleansing? I prefer to criticize that sort of thing.

39

Otto Pohl 03.19.08 at 10:35 am

Well I was going to take John Quiggin’s advice and ignore the Ragout since he is not brave enough to use his real name. But, the blogger supporting ethnic cleansing I was referring to is Withywindle. See the two posts below at his blog Athens and Jerusalem. The one on Palestinians is the most racist thing I have ever read on the internet.

Palestine

http://athens-and-jerusalem.blogspot.com/2008/03/gaza.html

Sudeten Germans

http://athens-and-jerusalem.blogspot.com/2008/03/on-ethnic-cleansings.html

40

John Quiggin 03.19.08 at 10:35 am

To restate, we’re happy to publish pseudonymous comments, to promote free discussion of the issues raised in posts.

But the idea that this gives people license to behave worse than they would under their own name is spurious.

Ragout, I’ve deleted the false accusation made against you. But, as you can see, all this puts us to trouble we don’t want or need. If you feel like testing the boundaries of what’s acceptable, please do it somewhere else.

Anything further from you on this thread will be deleted/

41

MFB 03.19.08 at 11:17 am

Some of us have agents in the field who might be compromised if we revealed our real names, you know.

What’s more, some of us have only just read the Protocols, the Turner Diaries, or the latest Conservative Party manifesto, and therefore are just bursting to share our new understanding of how the entire world is threatened by the evil conspiracy of fill-in-your-favourite-phobia-here.

I say that this is brutal oppression. Arise, ye geeksters of Internat starvation! Demand the right to tell lies and spread obscene racist nonsense at Crooked Timber! What else did we fight the Revolution for? What have the CroTims ever done for us, anyway?

42

SG 03.19.08 at 12:47 pm

It wasn’t false, anyone who cares to look can go and see it. But, as you requested, I won’t respond further.

43

Scarlet Johnson 03.19.08 at 1:31 pm

Do you have any evidence that outing people in this way reduces trolling? (I’m actually curious – it’s related to one of my research interests.)

You don’t check email addresses are valid, and there are anonymizers such as Tor, so if someone is intending to troll they can be pretty anonymous.

Also, in many CT threads I see a lot of social pressure being applied to suppress dissenting opinions. One of the advantages of pseudonymity is that it encourages the people who disagree with the party line to speak up. I don’t have much faith that the moderators will use their power to out people fairly.

44

mq 03.19.08 at 7:56 pm

Either have the courage to state your convictions under your own name or be quiet.

This is patronizing nonsense. I never say anything on CT, or indeed on the web in general, that I wouldn’t say to someone’s face. But I say a good deal I wouldn’t want to show up in google results right next to my professional work. That’s totally natural, I think. People who say this kind of thing usually have a profession that doesn’t require them to work closely with people with whom they have strong ideological disagreements. Or, like many tenured academics, they have nothing at stake when they do.

I’ve had the experience of googling job applicants names and finding political blog comments that without question changed my view of them, even when the comments were well within bounds for the particular web site they were posting on.

The main point of anonymity isn’t to allow the commenter the freedom to criticize the poster and get away with it. (Although I don’t think people should so thin-skinned and prima donna-ish about that, frankly). Most posters don’t have much power in the world. The point is to allow them to criticize the conventional wisdom and get away with it. The people I’m worried about associating my comments with my name aren’t the posters on the site, they’re people coming in from Google.

45

John Quiggin 03.19.08 at 9:50 pm

#43 We’ve certainly managed to induce better behavior from some commenters with the threat of outing them – these are usually people who make some reasonable comments but are tempted to engage in out-of-bounds personal attacks, sometimes using socks. And, looking more broadly across the blogosphere, exposing sock puppeteers on one site has often led to a broader recognition of their activities elsewhere. Of course, determined and capable trolls/socks can evade control systems, but a surprising number slip up.

I’ll restate again our commitment to preserve pseudonymity for commenters who are expressing dissent with the views stated here. Just avoid personal attacks and racist/sexist statements (particularly those directed at individuals commenters or CT authors) and we will protect your privacy. If you’re worried about inadvertently crossing a line, just stick to general issues and avoid mentioning individuals at all. If you still don’t trust us to act fairly, don’t comment.

46

Keith M Ellis 03.20.08 at 12:01 am

“I’ve had the experience of googling job applicants names and finding political blog comments that without question changed my view of them, even when the comments were well within bounds for the particular web site they were posting on.”—mq

And it didn’t occur to you that the fault might be yours in Googling a job applicant and reading blog entries that turn up?

The idea that privacy is or should be primarily enforced via legal/practical/technical barriers is ahistoric and, more importantly, simply false in almost all the social arenas where personal privacy is most important. Instead, what people do is rely upon etiquette and shame to restrict one’s own behavior from invading other people’s privacy. There is no law that says I can’t read someone else’s diary that I find when I stay at their home. Of for that matter, of my marriage partner. And yet, I don’t. I don’ read other peoples’ mail when it is in plain sight.

Relying upon anonymity of any form to solve the most currently pressing problems threatening privacy—that is, those threats to privacy that are the result of simply technological changes that make the impractical/difficult/impossible easy—is a losing game. As long as people feel that it’s appropriate to randomly Google and read anything someone said in their entire history on the Internet there will be technical improvements that make this easier and easier to do. The only way to solve this problem is to change the social acceptability of the behavior of the person who is invading privacy. Just as always has been the solution to privacy problems.

Stop Googling job applicants and reading anything other than results that pertain to their professional life. It’s not your business.

As for how much of a problem a lack of anonymity might be for people…my experience of someone who has almost always used my real, full name on the Internet and elsewhere online (here in comments since the fourth post on Crooked Timber in early July 2003) has been that I’ve never had a single problem or incident, ever, of any kind. I make my phone number available on my web page and have since 1994. No one has ever called me who’s read something I’ve said on the Internet. And I’m prolific.

I don’t doubt that this is a problem right now for people interviewing for jobs. MQ demonstrates that it’s a problem. And I also don’t doubt that the situation is different for women.

Even so, most claims of the necessity of anonymity I read in debates such as this presume problems that the defenders of anonymity have never actually been at risk of experiencing. The risks are taken for granted.

That said, I’m a bit skeptical about the evaluation of offenses against the “no personal insult” standard. As someone upthread has mentioned, threads here too often have the character that if your viewpoint is unfavorably judged by majority opinion (especially if it’s the opinion held by a contributer), then personal insults are acceptable. Or, at the very least, less unacceptable. That, I think, is partly a function of CT’s continued movement over the years to the embrace of the blog culture of snark (originated here from the beginning by dsquared). It’s gotten worse over the years and it’s part of why there are few women contributers here. CT started out as different from much of the blogosphere. More self-consciously academic—in a good way. Today, it reads much more like the rest of the political commentary web, with commenters who are also more and more like the commenters found elsewhere.

I don’t claim sainthood myself; far from it. But there was a time when I could come to CT and find myself urged to my better instincts, rather than to my worse, as I typically am almost everywhere else.

And anonymity doesn’t help. All my snark and profanity and arguing myself into corners for no other reason than cussedness is all out there to find, both as part of a corpus that spans the net, as well as part of a body of writing attached to my own, real-world name. Personally, I think that’s a good thing. I don’t think it’s all appropriate for any random person to read, per the above argument about privacy. But I do think we’re all better off—you and me and everyone else—that in some sense I can’t hide from the responsibility for what I have written, and will write.

47

Roy Belmont 03.20.08 at 2:53 am

Keith Ellis:
Can’t hide from responsibility, okay, but to whom?
This is written under a pseudonym, but I feel just as responsible for it as I would were my name and address in the byline. Not to a mass of dim-witted entertainment consumers, not to a pack of feral hackers with too much free time, not to a posse comitatus with distributed computing and thug politics.
Aside form the obvious responsibility to its direct readership, the supposition being that’s at its best an audience of relatively open-minded literate thoughtful readers, who are supposed to be engaging the ideas not the writer, I feel the burden of an unshakable responsibility to people who may likely never read anything I write here under this name. Former teachers, relatives, friends and lovers, heroes literary and otherwise etc. Some can’t read it, because they’re gone.
I feel responsible to them, not to some bullshit idea of the common internet denominator, which has sunk past rescue. To people and ideals that are personal, and essentially private. Nobody’s business but my own.
When you say

someone who has almost always used my real, full name on the Internet … I’ve never had a single problem or incident, ever, of any kind.

I’m prompted to wonder if that just might be because your opinions are not particularly inflammatory to the rabid virtual vigilantes that exist out there in large festering numbers.
Virtual vigilantism is much safer for its participants than the real kind, and exists in that quasi-moral zone you outlined so well with the diaries and the sense of a violation withheld by personal conscience. Privacy for most people under 35 now basically doesn’t exist as a human right, or even a common good. It’s the world of the constant minding presence, the panoptic camera, the eternal unseen parent. Under that artificial sky no privacy claims are taken seriously.
As you said, the opportunity to violate someone’s privacy sometimes does come up, and you decline it. This is honorable, and a quality so rare now in the majority as to be vestigial. Given that, and the subhuman nature of too many citizens on this wired-up charabanc, pseudonymity starts to look more like a kevlar vest, than a large rock to hide under.

48

Another Damned Medievalist 03.20.08 at 2:56 am

Otto Pohl, the fact that you don’t find any compelling reasons for pseudonymity is irrelevant of those who use pseudonyms do. Some academic institutions do think badly of blogging, as do many other employers. And, as I and many others have said here and elsewhere, many people use pseudonyms more as noms de plume, or as alternate identities where they can separate their professional and private opinions more clearly.

Having said that, I think it’s often clear when people use pseudonyms because they don’t want to own their own words in a public forum. I think that’s reprehensible, and have no problem with the CT group banning or publishing the IP of a sock puppet or troll — although I would hope that the person would be warned before any such action were taken.

For the record, at least one CT writer, and a few regular commenters, know my RL name. Even Cliopatria has recognized that there are many bloggers and commenters who have built up personae and reputations under their pseudonyms, and allow pseudonymous commenters, as long as they have a recognizable persona and comment only under one pseudonym.

Keith Ellis — I think it’s unrealistic to think that we might google a job candidate’s name, find three valid hits for professional work and one for, say, ‘convicted in porn ring’, and not read that, too. What if, for example, a person applies for a position in a particular field, and a google search results in a flamewar on a professional listserv? To me, this is as relevant as any other example of their work. “Plays well with others” is often a job requirement.

49

Another Damned Medievalist 03.20.08 at 2:59 am

Bugger. Correction to #48, because I fail at English this evening. ” The fact that you don’t find any compelling reasons for pseudonymity is irrelevant of those who use pseudonyms do ” should read, “The fact that you don’t find any compelling reasons for pseudonymity is irrelevant; many of those who use pseudonyms do.”

50

SG 03.20.08 at 3:11 am

For me the anonymity issue is more about the raving loony right – I don’t want to say something in comments that offends a lunatic christian, and then have them try to hound me out of my job. Its been done before…

51

abb1 03.20.08 at 9:22 am

I don’t get the diary analogy in #46. Indeed, your diary is private and confidential, and you probably keep it in your bedroom (and that the ‘technical barrier’ in the case of a diary).

And here you publish your thoughts on the friggin World-Wide-Web, the equivalent of publishing them in a newspaper or plastering them on billboards all over the world. Get real, etiquette is not going to do anything for you here.

When you sign your comments as ‘Keith M Ellis’ – as opposed to, say ‘Keith’ – the only reason I can imagine for doing that is that you want the world to know what kind of person Keith M Ellis is – as oppose to just making a point in a discussion; signing it as ‘Keith’ would’ve been more than sufficient for that purpose.

52

Keith M Ellis 03.20.08 at 10:51 pm

“And here you publish your thoughts on the friggin World-Wide-Web, the equivalent of publishing them in a newspaper or plastering them on billboards all over the world. Get real, etiquette is not going to do anything for you here.”

This is the equivalent to publishing one’s thoughts in a newspaper? Really? I think they’re not even in the least comparable.

Almost without exception, for it to matter in my Real Life, someone from my Real Life would have to seek out what I’ve written on the web, just as they would have to take positive action to read my diary. It’s not coming to their eyes unsought.

Also, the point of the diary example wasn’t about random strangers, but the people for whom reading my diary (were one to exist) would be trivially easy. Such as my significant other. There are few practical barriers against most possible and most important invasions of privacy. Your coworkers could routinely search your desk, your SO could read your diary and listen to your phone calls, etc. Most invasions of privacy don’t occur not because they can’t, but because people won’t.

“…the only reason I can imagine for doing that is that you want the world to know what kind of person Keith M Ellis is…”

I’ve explained why I do it. You don’t have to imagine. Which is for the best, as your imagination seems to be a bit limited and notably uncharitable.

I think that it’s both true, each in different respects, that what we write here and elsewhere on the Internet is both trivial/unimportant and important. It’s trivial in that talk is cheap and ubiquitous. It’s important because, nevertheless, talk has consequences; it affects people in the real world. Using my real name, in full, unifies the corpus of what I’ve written and holds me accountable to it. That’s good for both me and the people who read what I write.

“I’m prompted to wonder if that just might be because your opinions are not particularly inflammatory to the rabid virtual vigilantes that exist out there in large festering numbers.”

And you’d be wrong. It’s interesting that you’d just speculate and not go ahead and Google. I have strong opinions and, sadly, often express them in provocative terms. I’m outspoken in supporting, for example, feminism and gay rights, both issues that draw a great deal of rancor from reactionaries—a lot of it turned to personal attacks. I also very strongly believe in intellectually connecting the abstract with the personal and thus often ground my expressed view with personal details, easily used against me.

I’ve been in many a flame-war. I’ve had Internet Tough Guy arguments with threats of violence.

My email is almost always available in connection with everything I write, and it’s remarkable how few nasty emails I’ve received in the last quarter-century of being online.

“It’s been done before…”

So have a lot of things, all rarely. This is a flimsy rationalization, not a compelling argument showing considerable risk.

“I think it’s unrealistic to think that we might google a job candidate’s name, find three valid hits for professional work and one for, say, ‘convicted in porn ring’, and not read that, too.”

You’re cherry-picking an extreme case to make a point. More realistic is Googling someone for information you legitimately have a right to and seeing two-hundred Crooked Timber comments.

I think that we should, and will, develop a clear etiquette about Googling someone’s name, specifically. I don’t think employers should do this. If I were an RN, it wouldn’t be hard to Google “Keith Ellis” and “medicine” and “nursing”.

And Google presents just enough content and context to let you know what you probably have a responsibility to ignore.

“What if, for example, a person applies for a position in a particular field, and a google search results in a flamewar on a professional listserv?”

If it’s related to their work, I think it’s fair game, even if it’s in a more casual context relating to that work. Engaging in frequent flamewars in discussions among professional peers is most certainly relevant to someone potential employment. Flamewars about political issues is not.

53

abb1 03.20.08 at 11:12 pm

You seem to be arguing simultaneously that you should be held responsible for your on-line behavior and that you shouldn’t be. It’s quite a nuanced opinion.

54

Keith M Ellis 03.21.08 at 12:41 am

You’re being disingenuous. If you want to say I’m incoherent, say so. For example, instead of being coy and smug, I’ll simply say that I think you just aren’t thinking about this very hard.

I’m arguing that privacy and accountability aren’t mutually exclusive. Specifically, that the functional nature of privacy is that it allows limited accountability. Everyone is not just with everyone else in all their actions. We need people to not know everything about us because they cannot be counted upon to act justly with us in every circumstance. Sometimes it’s best that they don’t know things. Best for everyone. But it’s best that they don’t know because they choose to not know, rather than that they don’t know because I’m ensuring that they cannot know. The latter presumes bad intent and that trust cannot be possible. The former presumes good intent and that trust is possible.

If we didn’t have the social function of privacy etiquette, we’d have to enforce privacy in ways that would make accountability, when necessary, much more difficult.

If you can justify it to yourself, and eventually others if you want to make an argument on its basis, then you can work through everything I’ve written on Google to hold me accountable for something. I don’t know what that might be, but you could. If you could justify it. The etiquette barrier of privacy is what requires, or what should require, that you do so. Even now, with few arguing as I do that we should voluntary limit ourselves in what we can know about other people via the Internet, you’ll find that exhaustively trolling through Google results of what I’ve written to make a petty argument will rub a lot of people the wrong way. And depending upon where you look, and for what purpose, you’ll get people claiming you invaded my privacy.

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abb1 03.21.08 at 9:20 am

I could say that you’re being contradictory and incoherent, but then you would’ve told me that I’m an idiot for not understanding the nuance, so I just skipped that step and admitted that you’re too nuanced for me.

I seem to have successfully avoided being called ‘stupid’, but alas – I’m called ‘disingenuous’ instead. Oh well.

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Keith M Ellis 03.21.08 at 4:33 pm

“I could say that you’re being contradictory and incoherent, but then you would’ve told me that I’m an idiot for not understanding the nuance, so I just skipped that step and admitted that you’re too nuanced for me.”

An alternative you apparently didn’t consider was to say that it seems to you, as you understand my argument, that it’s incoherent or even contradictory in that I’m arguing for both accountability and that people not hold me accountable, and then asked for clarification.

Instead, what you just wrote quite explicitly confirms that you were being disingenuous while simultaneously arguing that I’m unfairly labeling you so! What chutzpah!

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abb1 03.21.08 at 6:50 pm

But I don’t really understand your argument; like I said: it’s too nuanced for me. I do concede that you might have a defensible argument there, I just can’t be bothered to think it thru; too much work for something that seems quite simple and not very interesting. So, I guess, this makes me lazy, not disingenuous.

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mq 03.21.08 at 7:15 pm

And it didn’t occur to you that the fault might be yours in Googling a job applicant and reading blog entries that turn up?

Perhaps you’re right; in my real life I’ve been called too nosy (although political flamewars could be seen as somewhat relevant to the job in question). But as others above point out the issue is that whatever fault I had here is likely to be more common than not among people in general, and this strikes me as a quite reasonable practical justification for pseudonyms.

It also means that outing someone is likely to be a greater punishment than the crime, which is really what this debate is about IMO. I really can see the case for outing people as a way of maintaining the proper kind of community. That puts a lot of premium on trusting those who wield the outing power. But what I’ve seen here is something of a double standard; posters themselves and those who agree with them can be highly tendentious and rather personal. But the poster and the group can get very offended and self-righteous very fast when someone is argumentative in return. This varies by poster, but some are much better at giving it out than they are at taking it. To the extent there is a commenter community at CT, I’d like to see it defined by vigorous disagreement with the posters just as much as agreement. Of course, it’s not my site.

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Keith M Ellis 03.22.08 at 3:19 am

About CT, I think I agree with you entirely, mq.

On the issue of privacy, I think that social etiquette is a powerful force and tends to evolve to answer needs. Just because most people today will Google and read what, arguably, they oughtn’t doesn’t mean that tomorrow they won’t find it distasteful to do so.

I talk about it because I think that raising the possibility, talking about the issue in these terms, is my way of helping bring that day about. But it will happen or not happen largely, I think, as the result of social necessity. I see privacy as equivalent to security, in computing terms. As they say, security through obscurity isn’t. (Which we can quibble with—I certainly believe that obscurity has a role in security.) Privacy through through technical barriers isn’t going to work, they will be defeated. And privacy through obscurity is a modern thing, too, the result of the move to cities and urban anonymity. But human culture is very old and we’ve clearly culturally evolved quite a few ways in which to deal with privacy issues. It seems to me that it’s simply the fact that technology moves so much more quickly than the cultural changes that follow that we’re in a period of low-privacy. Culture will catch up and people, quite simply, will learn not to look.

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