Twitter – Page 4 – Social Media Legality

Should we add Doxx to the Lexicon?

Emily Bazelon’s most recent NY Times Magazine article, The Online Avengers, details the activities of a group of individuals who “scour the internet for personal data” of bullies and then “publicly link that information to the perpetrator’s transgressions.” This practice of trolling the internet for transgressions is known as “doxxing.” The article focuses in particular attention to a man named Ash, who, together with a woman named Katherine, created an online group called OpAntiBullying. Although the group never met in person, and never met the victims for whom they championed, they worked together, for a while at least, to publicly shame adolescent bullies. One focus of the article is the infighting that eventually occurred among the small group of “do-gooders,” highlighting the fragile bond between zealots brought together by a common cause, and the way in which their united enthusiasm lead to an equally fevered undoing.

What struck me most about the article, was the use of the word doxx, which I hadn’t heard before. A cursory google search suggests the word has yet to gain much traction. Urbandictionary.com defines doxx as exposing someone’s true identity. A practice, the site suggests “is one of the scummiest things someone can do on the internet.” In contrast, Emily Bazelon profiles doxxing in a more positive manner. In her article Bazelon credits doxxing with bringing down the defendants in the Steubenville sexual assault case and with bringing awareness to a similar assault in Canada.

Doxxers are hackers. In most instances, a doxx can only occur if one breaks into someone’s twitter account, or instagram feed, finding incriminating comments or pictures. Consequently, most doxxers are anonymous, as was the case in the article.

But the practice and the goals of doxxers create a dichotomoy with which I am not sure I am comfortable. While a doxxers goal is more laudable, the conduct necessary to reach his or her goal is often illegal. Its a little like Robin Hood, committing a crime to achieve a better good. I am not sure how I come out on this, though I suspect I fall on the side of legality (would one expect otherwise from a lawyer?)

Regardless, I suspect doxx will become a word uttered with increasing frequency in the coming year. Thoughts, examples or opinions on doxx are greatly welcomed.

May it Please The Court, I’d Like to Tweet Now

Last week, the Iowa Supreme Court submitted a proposal to revise its current rules for expanded media coverage during courtroom proceedings, specifically addressing the use of smart phones, tablets and the like to live blog and tweet. With most of my courtroom experience to date taking place in NY and PA courts I found this to be quite interesting. Although some judges in NY and PA allow certain uses of mobile devices, most courts I have been in had a pretty strict no-cell-phone-use policy. I have, on more than one occasion, witnessed judges stop everything in order to reprimand an attorney or even a gallery member for not having their phone on silent. There are currently 36 states (see survey link below) that have a policy addressing the use Twitter in the Courtroom, but only a handful of those policies actually allow members of the media to use social media to report live from court.

One can immediately see at least some of the upside of allowing live tweets from court, as nationwide-dissemination of a tweet to the general public will grant them instantaneous access and knowledge of everything happening in the proceeding. However, one should just as easily be able to recognize some shortfalls of allowing the use of social media from live court. For instance, what if an empanelled juror came across certain blogs or tweets that affects their impartiality? Can justice truly be served or will the use of social media during a live trail put certain litigants at a disadvantage? With the exponential growth of social media and more and more people getting their news from social media platforms each year, it seems only inevitable that these are questions courts across the country will be facing in the near future. However, according to the most recent survey conducted by the CCPIO, an organization that partners with the National Center for State Courts, we are still further away than one might think from all courts hopping on the Social Media Train.

California Law Attempts to Protect our Youths Online

A few weeks ago California Governor Jerry Brown signed a new bill (SB 568) consisting of two distinct laws that will take effect January 1, 2015. The bill’s first law attempts to prevent certain online advertisements from reaching the eyes of minors. Any website or mobile application that is directed to minors, or has knowledge that minors use its service, are prohibited from marketing items including alcohol, firearms, tobacco/cigarettes, drug paraphernalia, UV tanning devices, spray-paints, tattoos and fireworks.

In my opinion, the implementation and regulation of this law will lead to more problems than it will solve. The language of this law is so over-inclusive and ambiguous that it fails to create a clear picture for website operators/advertisers to rely on. No where in the law does it require a website to obtain the ages of its users and without such information how are advertisers supposed to know which websites the law is covering? I’m not so sure that advertisers of the ‘black listed’ items intentionally direct their advertisements at kids in the first place, however, I do understand the desire to filter certain aspects of Internet use when it comes to children.

The bill’s second law, the so-called ‘Online Eraser’ law, requires social media type websites (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and the like) and applications to allow the removal of public content (post, tweet, etc.) upon request of registered users under the age of 18. Again, I completely understand the rationale behind this law (attempting to help a user erase an embarrassing tweet/post from their youth), but it simply will not work as is. A number of commentators have written the law off as ineffective due to the absence of any language that mentions reposts, retweets, or copies of the original. So although the user may be granted a takedown of their original post the law does nothing to help them further. Considering the user is going through the trouble to takedown such ‘regrettable posts’ it seems only logical that the content will be interesting enough to become a 3rd party’s repost or retweet. Recent court decisions have granted First Amendment protection to specific characteristics of social media so even if the law did refer to these subsequent posts aren’t we clearly venturing into First Amendment territory? Critics to this new California law believe that we are.

Social Justice and Social Media

Ariel Levy’s piece, Trial by Twitter, presents an astute recount of how Twitter lead to the identification, prosecution, and ultimately conviction of two Steubenville High School football players who raped a classmate. The article, which appears in this week’s New Yorker, supports a theory subscribed to dearly by authors of this blog; Social Media makes it harder for officers and defenders of the law to avoid prosecution of politically sensitive crimes. As Levy points out, the Steubenville case came to light, in part, because the victim’s parents presented attorneys with a “jump drive” of tweets relating to the horrible incident. The case divided a city, that was otherwise united in its adoration of its football team, making the prosecution somewhat contentious. Despite the cadre of support for the young men and although at first there was no direct evidence of the crime, the stream of Facebook posts, tweets and other social media, on which high school students posted, created a mountain of evidence that was just too hard to ignore.

In the case of the Steubenville rape, the evidence that spurred the arrests not only lead to the public outcry for prosecution but also provided a start to the acquisition of enough evidence to support a prosecution. In some cases, the social media rally sounds louder than the evidence can bear. In such an instance, we have, arguably, a “Trayvon Martin” type of situation, in which the public outcry caused an attorney general to reconsider opening a case that had previously been deemed unwinable. Ultimately, the initial call may have been right since the jury did not find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

In both instances, however, we have a bit of a cautionary tale. The blaring sound of social media can not be ignored when it comes to matters of social justice.

The Birth of RoboTweeting

NBC News reports that companies are becoming “Twitter-savvy” when it comes to consumer complaints. In some instances customers logging complaint are retweeted with patronizing responses. For example, according to the article, when @OccupyLA tweeted “you can help by stop stealing people’s houses!!” The Bank of America retweeted “We’d be happy to review your account.” Corporate manipulation of Twitter is yet another example of how “the system” can corral innovative technology for its own use. Gen-xers, hipsters and naughts have fled Facebook in droves once businesses hijacked the social media. Now Twitter. Can Instagram be far behind???

The Downside of Social Media

In the wake of the bombings that occurred during the Boston Marathon, and the manhunt that followed, several media outlets have reported that social media may have actually hindered, rather than helped, the FBI’s quest for swift justice. By all accounts, the search for the bombing brothers yielded one of the first nation-wide “up-close, play-by-play” accounts. In fact, CNBC reported that “[u]p to 8 of the top ten world-wide Twitter trends on Friday have been directly related to the Boston investigation.”

There is a downside to the rapid and widespread dissemination of information concerning the manhunt. Among some of the noted causes for concern; that easy access to police activity may aid suspects in their quest to escape; that misinformation can spread quite quickly, yielding unfair and undesirable results (take for example the case this past week where the NY Post identified the wrong person as one of the bombers) and that any news worthy event can prompt trollers to create fake postings and twitter feeds.

One of the biggest problems with disinformation is that it is hard to retract. Andy Borowitz keenly highlighted this phenomenon in his recent New Yorker parody, “CNN Quits Breaking News and Becomes “CNN Classic”

But the benefits of social media should not be discounted. Social media provided people with easy access to valuable information. Announcement that police caught one bombing suspect alive was released through Twitter, quickly relieving anxiety in Watertown and its environs. For those of us farther from the action, our social media accounts allowed us to follow the story from wherever we needed to be, a switch from the not to recent past where people were made to choose whether to remain near a television or phone or instead try to go about their daily lives, waiting anxiously to return to a news source.

The bombs went off just a few moments before my social media class. Eerily, 10 years ago, terrorists struck the first Tower just a few moments before my criminal law class. At the time, without us knowing the severity of the harm, I promptly cancelled class so students could find out any information they needed to gather about the horrific event. This time, I offered to cancel class again. My students, three of whom graduated from Boston University, assured me that class should go on and that any information they needed would reach them on their smart phone in a timely manner. Yes, they were distracted, but kudos to the students, who were nonetheless able to participate in class.

Tag: Twitter

The Birth of RoboTweeting

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