{"id":971,"date":"2012-10-30T13:42:27","date_gmt":"2012-10-30T13:42:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jlpp.org\/old_blog\/?p=971"},"modified":"2012-10-30T13:42:27","modified_gmt":"2012-10-30T13:42:27","slug":"the-internet-home-of-the-cowards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/2012\/10\/30\/the-internet-home-of-the-cowards\/","title":{"rendered":"The Internet Home of the Cowards"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_973\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-973\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jlpp.org\/old_blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Marinkovich-gawker-post.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-973\" title=\"Marinkovich gawker post\" src=\"http:\/\/www.jlpp.org\/old_blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Marinkovich-gawker-post-300x168.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-973\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">(image via Gawker.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\nGawker\u2019s Adrian Chen has the internet reeling from a recent <a href=\"http:\/\/gawker.com\/5950981\/unmasking-reddits-violentacrez-the-biggest-troll-on-the-web\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">public expos\u00e9<\/span><\/a> he authored.  Chen did the unthinkable: he publicly outed a <a href=\"http:\/\/reddit.com\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Reddit<\/span><\/a> user, Michael Brusch (formerly known only by his Reddit username Violentacrez).\n\nBrusch isn\u2019t a sympathetic character.  He moderated several of Reddit\u2019s most offensive <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Subreddit#Overview\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">subreddits<\/span><\/a>, including:\n<ul>\n\t<li>r\/chokeabitch<\/li>\n\t<li>r\/niggerjailbait<\/li>\n\t<li>r\/rapebait<\/li>\n\t<li>r\/hitler<\/li>\n\t<li>r\/jewmerica<\/li>\n\t<li>r\/misogyny<\/li>\n\t<li>r\/incest<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nHe also moderated two subreddits that have been shut down: r\/jailbait (shut down after <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/tv\/anderson-cooper-excoriates-reddit-for-creepy-jailbait-section\/\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Anderson Cooper reported<\/span><\/a> on it last year) and r\/creepshots (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailydot.com\/news\/reddit-creepshots-private-moderator-dox-blackmail\/\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">shut down<\/span><\/a> during the present controversy).\n\nAs <a href=\"http:\/\/gawker.com\/5950981\/unmasking-reddits-violentacrez-the-biggest-troll-on-the-web\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Chen writes<\/span><\/a>, \u201cYou can look those up on Reddit and visit them if you\u2019d like to ruin your day, but the content is self-explanatory.\u201d\n\nFor the sake of discussion, I\u2019ll explain the content of one subreddit: r\/creepshots consisted of often-sexualized photos of women taken without their permission.  Supporters of r\/creepshots argue the photos are taken in public places where these women have no reasonable expectation of privacy.\n\nLet\u2019s back up and talk about Reddit for a moment.  With one of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blueglass.com\/blog\/could-reddit-be-the-worlds-most-influential-website\/\">most active user bases<\/a> on the internet, Reddit boasts over 1 billion page views every month\u2014well over 20 million page views daily.  Over <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlanticwire.com\/entertainment\/2012\/07\/why-reddit-so-anti-women-epic-reddit-thread-counts-ways\/55080\/\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">65%<\/span><\/a> of Reddit\u2019s users identify as male.  Reddit\u2019s user base has been characterized as misogynistic and sexist by multiple news outlets (see, e.g., <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlanticwire.com\/entertainment\/2012\/07\/why-reddit-so-anti-women-epic-reddit-thread-counts-ways\/55080\/\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">The Atlantic<\/span><\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailydot.com\/society\/reddit-sexist-twoxchromosomes\/\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">The Daily Dot<\/span><\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.xojane.com\/issues\/michael-brutsch-violentacrez-reddit\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">xojane.com<\/span><\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.sfweekly.com\/exhibitionist\/2012\/09\/transverse_sikh_reddit_dad_skirt.php\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">SF Weekly<\/span>)<\/a>.  Of course, not all Redditors take part in the reprehensible behavior exposed in these articles\u2014but Reddit is essentially a democracy, so the site\u2019s most popular opinions win.  Upvotes and downvotes rule the day.\n\nSo why does <em>anyone<\/em> care if Brusch is outed?  Because Redditors (Reddit users) consider anonymity on Reddit sacred.  Chen should come well before Brusch on our public enemy list, so much so that Reddit moderators have banned <em>all<\/em> <em>links<\/em> to Gawker Media from countless subreddits, including several of the website\u2019s most popular (e.g., <a href=\"http:\/\/reddit.com\/r\/politics\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">r\/politics<\/span><\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/reddit.com\/r\/todayilearned\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">r\/todayilearned<\/span><\/a>).\n\nThe Gawker bans derive from an overwhelming consensus among Redditors that principles of free speech protect racist, bigoted speech and creepy sexualized photos taken without a woman\u2019s consent.  But the \u201couting\u201d of a Reddit user?  That\u2019s unforgivable.\n\nDo Redditors have a point?  Should user anonymity be especially sacred?\n\nAnonymity is constitutionally protected speech (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/supct\/html\/93-986.ZO.html\"><em><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission<\/span><\/em><\/a> (1995)).  In <em>McIntyre<\/em>, the Supreme Court held that a Ohio statute prohibiting anonymous political or campaign literature is unconstitutional.  It makes sense: we need <em>McIntyre<\/em> to prevent the outing of political dissidents (for a relevant modern example, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Political_repression_of_cyber-dissidents#China\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Chinese dissidents<\/span><\/a> use anonymity online for organizing and reporting what is otherwise subject to prosecution in China).\n\nA couple of years ago, the Supreme Court limited <em>McIntyre<\/em> in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/supct\/html\/09-559.ZS.html\"><em><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Doe v. Reed<\/span><\/em><\/a> (2010), holding that the First Amendment does <strong>not<\/strong> prevent the disclosure of signatures on a legislative referendum.  The distinction was based on the notion that citizens, in exercising their right to legislate in the referendum context, aren\u2019t protected by secrecy.  The Court considered <em>Doe<\/em> an exception to <em>McIntyre<\/em> because releasing names on a referendum just doesn\u2019t silence people in the same way as releasing names of political dissidents would.\n\nThe <em>Doe<\/em> opinion\u2019s footnote 4 contains some interesting language:\n<blockquote>\u201cJustice Scalia conceives of the issue as a right to anonymous speech. . . . But our decision in <em>McIntyre<\/em> posited no such freewheeling right.  The Constitution protects \u2018freedom of speech.\u2019 . . . . That freedom can be burdened by a law that exposes the speaker to fines, as much as it can be burdened by a law that exposes a speaker to harassment, changes the content of his speech, or prejudices others against his message. . . . <strong>The right, however, is the right to speak, not the right to speak without being fined or the right to speak anonymously<\/strong>.\u201d  (emphasis mine)<\/blockquote>\nThe Court, above, is responding to Justice Scalia\u2019s concurrence\u2014which is drawn from his convictions that <em>McIntyre<\/em> was wrongly decided (he dissented in that case) and that the First Amendment does not include a protection for anonymity.  Scalia concurs in <em>Doe<\/em>, making a philosophical point about anonymity in America:\n<blockquote>\u201cRequiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed.  For my part, I do not look forward to a society which, thanks to the Supreme Court, campaigns anonymously (<em>McIntyre<\/em>) and even exercises the direct democracy of initiative and referendum hidden from public scrutiny and protected from the accountability of criticism.  This does not resemble the Home of the Brave.\u201d<\/blockquote>\nThe Supreme Court cases looking at speech often step back and ask, \u201cWho does this speech offend\u201d or \u201cvictimize\u201d?  Let\u2019s do that practice here.  Many Redditors are saying you can\u2019t compare the two alleged victims, Brusch and the unknowing subjects of the r\/creepshots photos.  They argue that Brusch, the publicly outed (or \u201cdoxxed,\u201d in hackerspeak) Reddit moderator is the real victim: he has since lost his job in addition to the public shaming.  On the other hand, let\u2019s also take a look at one of the hypothetical, unidentified female victims of r\/creepshots\u2014after all, she\u2019s been outed too.  We (the internet collective) might not know her name, but we do have her compromising photo.  Maybe she, too, was fired\u2014in this case, for a seemingly promiscuous photo taken without her consent.  Do we care that becoming involuntary masturbation material for creepy guys is now a part of her destiny <em>forever<\/em>?  (As we all know: the internet never forgets).\n\nReddit, as a private organization, can obviously do whatever it wants\u2014but its user base wants to take free speech as far as the U.S. government allows.\n\nWhy <em>should<\/em> Reddit protect the internet\u2019s cowards?  I agree that political dissidents from other countries need protection, and Reddit could be a vessel for that.  I also believe that the internet is a powerful anonymous outlet for those questioning their sexuality, as anonymity enables many to discuss predicaments without fear of rejection from judgmental families and communities.\n\nWhile it might be tough for the Supreme Court to find a workable distinction, I think Redditors can\u2014they just overwhelmingly don\u2019t want to.  Redditors point to the blog <a href=\"http:\/\/www.peopleofwalmart.com\/\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">People of Walmart<\/span><\/a> to argue r\/creepshots photos are no different: in neither case has the anonymous poster obtained the photographed person\u2019s consent.  But pointing to someone else\u2019s equally deplorable behavior only dodges the question.  Reddit is hosting these subreddits, financially backing them by powering the servers that keep these subreddits readily accessible.\n\nCan Reddit make a meaningful distinction that would protect the noble anonymous (political dissidents and bullied LGBTQ teens) from the shameful anonymous (Brusch and bullies themselves)?  Could Reddit functionally distinguish some content from others by banning certain subreddits?  What criteria could it use?\n\nI propose Reddit prevent the desire to \u201cout\u201d certain users by banning certain content.  Chen outed Brusch because he was engaged in objectively outrageous and deplorable behavior\u2014behavior I don\u2019t think is <em>that<\/em> hard to define.  Reddit should turn towards the Fourteenth Amendment, establishing free speech parameters that protect against hate speech targeting the LGBTQ community in addition to the Supreme Court-acknowledged <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Protected_class\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">protected classes<\/span><\/a>: race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, and disabled status.  Every subreddit Brusch moderated contained content valuing discrimination of these protected classes.\n\nReddit could have <em>more<\/em> success and <em>more<\/em> users if it establishes itself as an internet safe zone instead of an enabler of cowardly hate speech.  After all, fortune favors the brave.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JLPP\u2019s Senior Blog Editor Suzy Marinkovich looks at the heated debate on online anonymity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":973,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[142,507,656,691,856,1294,1469],"class_list":["post-971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-policycontributor-blogs","tag-anonymity","tag-doxxing","tag-first-amendment","tag-free-speech","tag-internet","tag-reddit","tag-subreddit"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}