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The Anonymous Back-Stabbing of Internet Message Boards

Leonard Pitts Jr.

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Al Diaz/Miami Herald/MCT/Newscom

One of the most widely read newspaper opinion writers in the United States, Leonard Pitts Jr. (b. 1957) is a syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald and was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2004. He is also the author of two novels and the nonfiction Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood. In this 2010 editorial he wonders whether the anonymity provided by the Internet causes more harm than good.

It must have seemed like a great idea at the time.

There was this new medium, the Internet, and newspapers were posting stories on it, and someone decided to create a forum where readers could discuss and debate what they just read. It must have seemed an inspiration kissed by the spirit of Jefferson: a free public space where each of us could have his or her say.

Unfortunately, the reality of the thing has proved to be something else entirely. For proof, see the message boards of pretty much any paper. Or just wade in the nearest cesspool. The experiences are equivalent. Far from validating some high-minded ideal of public debate, message boards — particularly those inadequately policed by their newspapers and/or dealing with highly emotional matters — have become havens for a level of crudity, bigotry, meanness and plain nastiness that shocks the tattered remnants of our propriety.

For every person who offers some trenchant observation on the point at hand, there are a dozen who are so far off point they couldn’t find their way back with a compass and road map. For every person who brings up some telling fact, there are a dozen whose “facts” are fantasies freshly made up to suit the exigencies of arguments they otherwise cannot win.

5 Why have message boards failed to live up to the noble expectations? The answer, in a word, is anonymity. The fact that on a message board — unlike in an old-fashioned letter to the editor — no one is required to identify themselves, no one is required to say who they are and own what they’ve said, has inspired many to vent their most reptilian thoughts.

So, some of us are intrigued by what recently happened in Cleveland. It seems someone using the alias “lawmiss” had posted provocative comments and scathing personal attacks on the Web site of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Some of those comments and attacks evinced an unlikely familiarity with cases being heard by a local judge, Shirley Strickland Saffold. When lawmiss made a comment about the mental state of a reporter’s relative, the paper decided to trace the nickname. It found that the postings came from Judge Saffold’s personal e-mail account.

Saffold claims her 23-year-old daughter authored the comments. Sydney Saffold, who lives in another city, supports her mom’s story. Believe them if you choose.

Meanwhile, the paper has been criticized by some observers for unmasking lawmiss, and there is some merit to that. It’s wrong to offer anonymity, then yank it away. But it would’ve been more wrong to have evidence that a judge viewed an attorney appearing in her court on a capital case as “Amos and Andy” — to use one example — and do nothing about it.

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The larger point is that the paper should not have offered its message posters anonymity in the first place. No paper should. A confidential source necessary to break the big story is one thing. But the only imperative here is to deliver more eyes to the Web site.

10 As any student of Sociology 101 can tell you, when people don’t have to account for what they say or do, they will often say and do things that would shock their better selves.

That’s the story of the mousy, mosque-going schoolteacher swept up in the window-breaking mob during the big blackout. It’s the story of the milquetoast accountant who insults the quarterback’s mother from the safety of the crowd. And it is the story of newspaper message boards, which have inadvertently licensed and tacitly approved the worst of human nature under the guise of free speech.

Enough. Make them leave their names. Stop giving people a way to throw rocks and hide their hands. Any drop-off in the quantity of message board postings will surely be made up in the quality thereof.

That’s my opinion. If you don’t like it, well, at least you know who to blame.

seeing connections

There are activists interested in preserving the right to remain anonymous in online environments. On one site, called My Name Is Me, people make postings about why they feel the need to remain anonymous.

My name is Cory, and I’m the co-owner and co-editor of Boing Boing, a widely read blog with a thriving culture of commenters and suggesters. Boing Boing’s best commenters and suggesters are almost all pseudonymous, and for me, knowing the names my readers and collaborators choose is much more interesting than knowing their “real” names—the name someone’s parents chose is a lot less telling than the name that person chose, after all. More than a decade of experience with Boing Boing does not bear out the thesis that real names are the key to accountability or civility. Some of the most vicious, awful trolls we’ve encountered are delighted to do their disruptive work under their “real” names; some of our most thoughtful, clever, and useful contributions are from people who “hide” behind pseudonyms (or total anonymity).

Our pseudonymous contributors go beyond using “handles” to frame their views—some use pseudonyms to allow them to speak freely without having their views attributed to their employers. A large number of our readers live in repressive regimes where a public association with their offline identity puts their freedom and safety at risk.

Pseudonymity makes it possible for the most marginalized people in our community to communicate with us; it also allows people who are notorious or famous to join the discussion without dragging in all the baggage of whatever it is they’re known for, making for debates that focus on substance, not celebrity.

How would Pitts likely respond to Doctorow’s case for preserving online anonymity?

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Understanding and Interpreting

  1. Contrast the ideal of the newspaper message board with its reality, as described by the author.

  2. Summarize the multiple sides of the debate around the actions of the Cleveland newspaper and its search for the identity of the anonymous poster “lawmiss.”

  3. An argumentative piece is expected to address the opposition, those who think differently. To what extent does the author, Leonard Pitts Jr., address the position of those who think that online anonymity is a good thing? What’s included and what’s missing from the opposition’s argument?

Analyzing Language, Style, and Structure

  1. What does the phrase “shocks the tattered remnants of our propriety” (par. 3) suggest about who Pitts believes his audience to be?

  2. Reread the article and explain how particular words and phrases reveal Pitts’s attitude toward anonymous postings.

  3. How does the story of the judge in Cleveland support the author’s argument against anonymity? What is left unsaid in Pitts’s comment, “Believe them if you choose” (par. 7)?

  4. How convincing is the evidence that Pitts provides to support the statement, “[W]hen people don’t have to account for what they say or do, they will often say and do things that would shock their better selves” (par. 10)?

  5. What effect does Pitts achieve by using the phrase “kissed by the spirit of Jefferson” in paragraph 2?

Connecting, Arguing, and Extending

  1. While this article deals almost exclusively with the anonymous postings on newspaper websites, the issue of anonymity has also been linked to the problem of cyber-bullying. Would ending anonymity on such sites help to curb cyber-bulling? Why or why not?

  2. In 2013, the editors of Popular Science published an article titled “Why We’re Shutting Off Our Comments.” To support their case, they cited a study from the University of Wisconsin–Madison that measured how civil or uncivil comments affected a reader’s viewpoint on the article the comments accompanied—in this case, a fictional scientific report. Read through this portion of the argument and explain whether you find it compelling, and whether you agree, disagree, or would qualify the editors’ decision to shut off comments on their website.

    Uncivil comments not only polarized readers, but they often changed a participant’s interpretation of the news story itself.

    In the civil group, those who initially did or did not support the technology—whom we identified with preliminary survey questions— continued to feel the same way after reading the comments. Those exposed to rude comments, however, ended up with a much more polarized understanding of the risks connected with the technology.

    Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they’d previously thought.

    Another, similarly designed study found that just firmly worded (but not uncivil) disagreements between commenters impacted readers’ perception of science.