Cyber Harassment Legal Expert Wins MacArthur "Genius" Grant -- Read My 2014 Interview On Her Proposal to Strip Anonymity Privileges From Abusers

The latest batch of MacArthur Fellow "genius" awards have just been announced, and they very astutely include law professor Danielle Citron, who's been leading the charge to combat Internet-based harassment for many years. At the height of "Gamergate", the 2014 online abuse campaign which helped utterly deform the Internet we have to deal with today, I interviewed Professor Citron about her then-new book Hate Crimes in Cyberspace, and her brilliant suggestion for how online communities can defend against harassers -- strip them of their anonymity privileges:

"[R]equiring users to own their own words, so to speak, has the effect of bringing online speech to a level playing field as offline speech," Professor Citron explains to me. "Offline, social norms develop as people react to speech and gauge people’s reactions. Workers are far less likely to sexually harass fellow employees because others will think badly of them and because it may in fact be cause for termination and liability for the employer."

In online spaces which allow people to identify themselves by their real name or by an anonymous pseudonym -- such as Twitter -- that calculus changes:

"When only the victim is named and not the perpetrator in online spaces, others can hardly send the signal that their behavior is unacceptable and harmful. If anonymity is a privilege that can be lost, we could introduce the power of social norms back into the calculus. Perpetrators may decline to fantasize about how they would rape named individuals because they would not want to be seen as the kind of person who does that sort of thing. And bringing names into the calculus would help victims to bring legal action if the speech was proscribable like true threat. The approach is less drastic than removal, though removal should be considered for direct threats, for instance."

Read the rest here.

Comments

[Amanda Dallin]

I understand her point but removing anonymity or even the threat that you can lose anonymity if someone disagrees with what you say, will have the unintended consequence of shutting down a lot of speech. It's not just the abusive jerks who use anonymity, but also those who face RL consequences for opinions that are not popular. Vulnerable people will be removed from the conversation if they cannot be anonymous.

[Simple Lemon]

@Amanda that's the entire point of removing anonymity. It's popular with the anti-free speech people because they are offended if you say something different than what they want you to say. Our educational and social systems have created generations where opposite opinions should be classed as "hate speach". Of course the anti-free speech people given the positions of authority to do so would take away my anonymity for saying that. Just look at Facebook and Twitter, their record of banning speach looks worse than Chairman Mao could have done.

[Luther Weymann]

You can see just by her (no it's not brilliant, it's unintelligent) suggestion that Comrade Citron does not understand the concept of Freedom Of Speech. In her secluded bubble world it makes sense to silence those she disagrees with because as a tenured professor that's what they do, they indoctrinate you into their beliefs and silence yours. Online hate is just like TV, same thing, no I'm not making a crazy comparison. You don't like what you are watching on TV because it upsets you, so what do you do? That's right. You change the channel. Now with Comrade Citron working hand in hand with her outrage culture comrades you don't have to change the channel anymore, no, no, no. You get the channel to eliminate any threat to your feelings. The channel people lose their careers, their social status, their friends, but you don’t care do you, Citron, you got what you wanted that’s all that matters. I don't read online hate. I don't have to. You see I'm actually in control of myself, unlike Citron who thinks she needs to control me because I can't. I just don’t read it. I turn the channel. That is Freedom of Speech. “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Comrade Citron does not like that saying. Her philosophy is “I disapprove of what you say, and I want enough power to stop your right to say it.” You're in the wrong country Comrade Citron, better China or Russia for you.