Online Communities: Will Online Anonymity Survive?

There is an interesting lawsuit working it’s way through the courts right now in New Haven Connecticut that may impact everyone who runs an online community. The case and arguments are detailed in the article “U.S. Internet defamation suit tests online anonymity” from Reuters on June 16, 2007. The issues are similar to what many of us in the online community/social media business deal with every day:

• Member A attacks Member B
• Member C, D, E, F & G join in the attack on Member B
• Blogger Z and Y post entries which repeat the attacks on Member B

The question becomes, if what Member A posts is a fabrication and defamatory to Member B’s reputation can Member A be held responsible? What about the other members and the bloggers? And more important to the organization who owns the community…are they responsible and/or liable for damages?

If the court rules in favor of the plaintiffs in this case, the owners of the community may be liable for not taking action to prevent or remove the offending content. From the article, it is clear that the site is not well run nor does it follow any clearly defined rules of use or terms of service which spell out how the site will be run. That won’t protect them in this case. Here are a couple of the excerpts from the case which were posted and left on the site:

1. According to court documents, a user on the site named “STANFORDtroll” began a thread in 2005 seeking to warn Yale students about one of the women in the suit, entitled “Stupid Bitch to Enter Yale Law.” Another threatened to rape and sodomize her, the documents said.
2. Some posts made false claims about her academic record and urged users to warn law firms, or accused her of bribing Yale officials to gain admission and of forming a lesbian relationship with a Yale administrator, the court papers said.

It’s pathetic that a company employee did not think that a threat of rape or sodomy was inappropriate on a site for law school students.

Many people getting into the industry now would say that the First Amendment covers speech on the internet… but I would reply that there are limits and defamation of character is not covered in the case of private persons. We are still in the infancy of the case law which will be applied to user generated content. From the article:

• The two, who say they suffered substantial “psychological and economic injury,” also sued a former manager of the site because he refused to remove disparaging messages. The manager had cited free-speech protections.

What I find a little sad is that a site manager allowed comments about threatening another member to remain on the site. There needs to be a zero tolerance policy regarding threats in any online community.

This case and the company being sued represent a text book case study for how not to run an online community. Any organization that is going to offer an online community needs not only a clear terms of service/rules of use agreement but also a well trained team to moderate the user generated content. Moderators must fairly enforce the rules and be quick to act when the level of discourse sinks to the threat stage.

We’ll see how the court rules on this. It’s impact could be widespread.

Contact us to learn more about the best practices for moderation of online communities and user generated content.

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