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What’s Facebook’s responsibility when the nation seeks to lynch someone?

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Re: What’s Facebook’s responsibility when the nation seeks to lynch someone?

#41

Post by dinkumthinkum »

citricsquid wrote: post #10

Every time something like this happens people react in quite predictable ways, the creation of Facebook pages is one of the more common ones. Why do people do this? Does it come from social pressure to show just how angry they are with actions, is it just how people cope with terrible news (by doing something even if it's ultimately futile) or is it just another case of humans doing irrational things? My google-fu is…

I'm sure there a myriad of things at work here but let's first consider YouTube comments. Go on YouTube, find just about video that has more than 10 or so comments. It will inevitably devolve into some hate filled tirade, usually racist or sexist in nature. I think basically what it boils down to is that there are a lot of really ignorant (any political site, especially right wing), and angry, hateful people out there that want to burn someone for anything. Now couple the fact that there are so many deranged people and then give them a place to blabber away, the Internet, and you have a recipe for constant demagoguery and witch-burning. It's kind of like "letters to the editor." It's mostly the idiots that are whipped up in enough frenzy to even care to write these kinds of letters; Facebook pages and Twitter campaigns are just another form of this phenomenon.

Re: What’s Facebook’s responsibility when the nation seeks to lynch someone?

#42

Post by benesch »

rymith wrote: post #25
benesch wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd run into quite a bit of trouble with the first amendment and freedom of the press.

How would you make that case? There are plenty of restrictions on free speech as well as freedom of the press, which is far from absolute, and is most certainly regulated.

True, but a restriction on printing the names of criminals and victims would be considered a "content-based restriction," which are subject to strict scrutiny.

There is an established legal basis for allowing publication of victim's names: "Thus, it is ordinarily unconstitutional for a state to proscribe a newspaper from publishing the name of a rape victim, lawfully obtained. This is because there ordinarily is no compelling governmental interest in protecting a rape victim’s privacy" (4). IANAL, but permission to print criminal's names (which are obtained legally) follows from similar logic.

[0]: Congressional Research Service: Exceptions to the First Amendment: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/95-815.pdf

Re: What’s Facebook’s responsibility when the nation seeks to lynch someone?

#43

Post by bluedanieru »

benesch wrote: post #37
vacri wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, RSF places the Netherlands in #3 place of the Press Freedom Index, and the US comes in at #47. http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2011-2012,1043.html

The US's fall from #20 is largely a result of arrests of reporters attempting to document the Occupy movement. While freedom of the press in the US may be violated pragmatically, you'd have a much harder time challenging it philosophically. That is, police offers arresting individual reporters (especially ones involved in protest) slips by relatively easily, but a federal law placing limits on what information the pr…

So... what? It would be hard for authorities in the US to pass a law restricting speech, so instead they just restrict speech without going through the bother of making a law about it? How is that better?

Re: What’s Facebook’s responsibility when the nation seeks to lynch someone?

#44

Post by dinkumthinkum »

dkarl wrote: post #34
citricsquid wrote: post #10

Every time something like this happens people react in quite predictable ways, the creation of Facebook pages is one of the more common ones. Why do people do this? Does it come from social pressure to show just how angry they are with actions, is it just how people cope with terrible news (by doing something even if it's ultimately futile) or is it just another case of humans doing irrational things? My google-fu is…

I can't offer a psychological explanation, but my impression from the people I know who are the most eager to offer their opinion on the shooter is that they love it, that this is the coolest thing that happened to them this month. They'd be bored without it (or they'd be stirring up drama with their friends or co-workers.) They say they're angry, but they seem more excited and gleeful. Some people love tracking hurr…

Sure, it's something to get whipped up into a frenzy about. There's a reason we all know about pitchforks and yet few of us would know how to use them for their proper purpose. I think there are several things at play here, one is this kind of "entertainment" that you describe. The other is arm-chair psychology many of us engage in about what this shooter was like, even before there was any stable information out there. It's mostly just ignorance.

Re: What’s Facebook’s responsibility when the nation seeks to lynch someone?

#45

Post by dinkumthinkum »

jrwoodruff wrote: post #20

The responsibility is not Facebook's, but rather the news organizations that reported early rumors and reports as facts. IANAL, but i would expect that they potentially face libel suits for defamation of character. In this situation, Facebook is merely a modern day phone book (albeit vastly more robust and complex). It is the news organization that bears the responsibility of gathering, checking and publishing verifi…

I don't think you can even remotely refer to it as a phone book and this is not to be pedantic. With Facebook, you communicate, albeit mostly inane drivel that passes for "thoughts" but you can communicate. In fact, you can use Facebook to whip people into an angry frenzy, directly, rather than just use it as a directory to call people indirectly organize a lynch mob. In some ways, you could say the harassment is actually occurring on Facebook.

Re: What’s Facebook’s responsibility when the nation seeks to lynch someone?

#46

Post by dinkumthinkum »

vacri wrote: post #30
danso wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, this was not a rumor...their police sources had been mixed up because the shooter died with his brother's ID....that is the explanation, anyway...so much of this story has been contradiction after contradiction that it almost seems like someone in the police department is a 4chan troll

Even if the name was 'right', it was still the news organisations getting the wrong individual with that name.

News organizations are generally irresponsible. Remember the Zaniada Gonzales debacle? A poor woman was nearly lynched for having the same name as an imaginary person dreamed up by some child killer.

Re: What’s Facebook’s responsibility when the nation seeks to lynch someone?

#47

Post by koudelka »

Hi all,

Ryan's roommate here, longtime HN lurker.

It would have been nice if FB locked down his profile a little sooner, for sure. I imagine we're going to be dealing with this shit for a while to come now.

If you wouldn't mind, can you help us get the hashtag #ApologizeToRyan off the ground? Maybe social media can be used to restore his good name, too.

Re: What’s Facebook’s responsibility when the nation seeks to lynch someone?

#48

Post by bcoates »

If these social networks wished to discourage such behavior, they could create a "most popular comment" feature that pinned something you said publicly and in the last few months in your public profile, then quietly tweak their algorithms to prefer public lynch-mob dickishness or other bad behavior to this spot.

Re: What’s Facebook’s responsibility when the nation seeks to lynch someone?

#49

Post by peeters »

brianchu wrote: post #19
dkokelley wrote: post #2

I wonder what (if any) legal recourse Ryan Lanza might have against the news agencies that libeled his name. I imagine it really depends on the exact wording used, but Ryan could have a great defamation/emotional distress case on his hands, when everything settles.

In the US it is very hard to win a libel case (as the plaintiff). Basically, you have to prove that the news agencies intentionally and maliciously libeled you. This is pretty darn near impossible to prove in most cases. If I recall correctly, an example of a case where a libel lawsuit would be successful is one where the new agency makes up something or encourages a source to make up something. EDITS (replies to bel…

> Regardless, clearly Ryan Lanza does not have a case since law enforcement officials did originally identify him, wrongly, as the suspect.

They did? The article made it sound like they used the name Ryan Lanza, but that they didn't identify which Ryan Lanza.

Re: What’s Facebook’s responsibility when the nation seeks to lynch someone?

#50

Post by DannyBee »

danso wrote: post #27
dkokelley wrote: post #2

I wonder what (if any) legal recourse Ryan Lanza might have against the news agencies that libeled his name. I imagine it really depends on the exact wording used, but Ryan could have a great defamation/emotional distress case on his hands, when everything settles.

None. The news agencies claim it came from the police, who had been confused. There was no malicious intent, no gross negligence, and he is a limited public figure no matter if he was the shooter or the brother of the shooter

Well, no, because he was actually neither the shooter nor the brother of the shooter, so he is unlikely to be found a limited public figure. Plus, pegging him as such without doing even the most basic research seems like negligence to me (any reasonably prudent person would have taken 15 fucking seconds to look harder at his profile)

Otherwise, your assessment would be correct.

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