The cyber-civility thread

[legalskier]

Human-flesh search engines

...cyberposses and online harassment.

Human-flesh search engines...have become a Chinese phenomenon: they are a form of online vigilante justice in which Internet users hunt down and punish people who have attracted their wrath. The goal is to get the targets of a search fired from their jobs, shamed in front of their neighbors, run out of town. It’s crowd-sourced detective work, pursued online — with offline results.***[It's] not just a search by humans but also a search for humans, initially performed online but intended to cause real-world consequences. Searches have been directed against all kinds of people, including cheating spouses, corrupt government officials, amateur pornography makers, Chinese citizens who are perceived as unpatriotic, journalists who urge a moderate stance on Tibet and rich people who try to game the Chinese system. Human-flesh searches highlight what people are willing to fight for: the political issues, polarizing events and contested moral standards that are the fault lines of contemporary China.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Human-t.html?scp=4&sq=sunday magazine&st=cse

Think it can't happen here?

 

[legalskier]

Well this isn't very cyber-civil...

Massive Censorship Of Digg Uncovered
A group of influential conservative members of the behemoth social media site Digg.com have just been caught red-handed in a widespread campaign of censorship, having multiple accounts, upvote padding, and deliberately trying to ban progressives. An undercover investigation has exposed this effort, which has been in action for more than one year. “The more liberal stories that were buried the better chance conservative stories have to get to the front page. I’ll continue to bury their submissions until they change their ways and become conservatives.”-phoenixtx (aka vrayz)
Digg.com is the powerhouse of social media websites. It is ranked 50th among US websites by Alexa (117th in the world), by far the most influential social media site. It reached one million users in 2007 and likely has more than tripled that by this point. Digg generates around 25 million page views per month, over one third of the page views of the NY Times. Front page stories regularly overwhelm and temporarily shut down websites in a process called the “Digg Effect.”*** [Digg's model makes] it very susceptible to external gaming whereby users from certain groups attempt to push their viewpoint or articles to the front page to give them traction. This was evident with the daily spamming of the upcoming Political section with white supremacist material from the British National Party (articles which rarely reached the front page). The inverse of this effect is more devastating however. Bury brigades could effectively remove stories from the upcoming sections by collectively burying them.
http://blogs.alternet.org/oleoleolson/2010/08/05/massive-censorship-of-digg-uncovered/

A "bury brigade?" That's a new one on me.

 

[legalskier]

Is reading wife's e-mail a crime?

Oakland County prosecutors, relying on a Michigan statute typically used to prosecute crimes such as identity theft or stealing trade secrets, have charged Leon Walker, 33, with a felony after he logged onto a laptop in the home he shared with his wife, Clara Walker. Using her password, he accessed her Gmail account and learned she was having an affair. He now is facing a Feb. 7 trial. She filed for divorce, which was finalized earlier this month. *** "It's going to be interesting because there are no clear legal answers here," said Frederick Lane, a Vermont attorney and nationally recognized expert who has published five books on electronic privacy. The fact that the two still were living together, and that Leon Walker had routine access to the computer, may help him, Lane said. ***
Several area defense attorneys were astonished by the filing of the criminal charges. "What's the difference between that and parents who get on their kids' Facebook accounts?" attorney Deborah McKelvy said. "You're going to have to start prosecuting a whole bunch of parents."

Full story (including a reader poll): http://www.freep.com/article/20101226/NEWS03/12260530/&template=fullarticle

 

[legalskier]

Yikes. :-o

Arizona pushes law to make 'annoying' comments illegal
What if obnoxious or aggressive remarks made on Facebook and Twitter ended in criminal charges? Some free speech advocates are saying that's what a new law in Arizona could do.
*** On one hand, advocates of this law say it would make it easier to criminalize perpetrators who stalk their victims online or with text messages; but, on the other hand, free speech advocates say the law's language is too broad making any "annoying" or "offensive" comment made on the Internet illegal. ***
Story: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57409617-93/arizona-pushes-law-to-make-annoying-comments-illegal/

 

[Nick]

Heard about that law, without getting political, that is just ridiculous.

I think about it fairly often ... during the grown / explosion of the Internet it really has been an electronic "wild wild west" where everything goes. tax free sales; say whatever you want, anonymity, etc.

I wonder how long that will last. There's not a doubt in my mind in 10 years people will be amazed there was no sales tax on the Internet.

 

[snoseek]

Heard about that law, without getting political, that is just ridiculous.

I think about it fairly often ... during the grown / explosion of the Internet it really has been an electronic "wild wild west" where everything goes. tax free sales; say whatever you want, anonymity, etc.

I wonder how long that will last. There's not a doubt in my mind in 10 years people will be amazed there was no sales tax on the Internet.

Nick, I have zero worries that the trolling scene here will go on unscathed.

 

[Nick]

Thanks :lol: