Blogging Ethics

I can’t agree more with Kathy Sierra and Robert Scoble over the ethics of blogging about ideas and people that we do not agree with. You can discuss and critique ideas and even the character of the person presenting the idea, but it must be done in a civilized manner. What has happened recently with the death threats, the misogyny, and the all around generally rude comments made about professional technologists, particularly women, is disgusting. I’ve seen the many rude comments on many tech forums. We wouldn’t want anyone to treat our mothers or wives this way, so why do we put up with it in these so called “polite” conversations?

Kathy Sierra

If you are not aware of the current state affairs, feel free to read Kathy Sierra’s post Death threats against bloggers are NOT “protected speech” at her blog and Robert Scoble’s post Taking the Week Off .

I’m not privy of course to why Kathy Sierra was targeted. It may be a personal attack that is meant as a business strategy to diminish a professional opinion of hers. It might be a group of bloggers who childishly were trying to increase their unique hits to their own blogs, or it might be nothing more than a person she once turned down for a date. In any case, it doesn’t matter, no one deserves to be treated with that kind of vitriol. I mean, after all, we are talking about technology and ideas here, not war.

The whole Mac vs. PC, Xbox 360 vs. Wii debates are not real wars folks, they are merely sporting events. When I joke with people about the supremacy of one system over another, it is merely that , a joke. More and more I am beginning to feel like we, as primarily secular scientists and technologists, are getting wrapped up in some kind of Technology Schism that at times begins to resemble some kind of messy technological extremism. That, in my opinion, would be the worst thing we could do. I agree with Leo Laporte, who has said often that we really do need and should desire friendly competition amongst vendors and providers. It is the only thing that benefits us, the plain old user, who wields absolutely no power anywhere in the tech world other than the purchasing power of our wallets as simple consumers.

I do agree with Scoble

Robert Scoble

that for those of us who are adults, it is incumbent upon us to reflect upon what kind of ethics and values we want to promote with our posts, but I do not lay the blame of such actions at the feet of communities that have sprung up around social bookmarking and news sites such as Digg, Slashdot, Techcrunch, Gizmodo, etc. These sites are wonderful, but to say that these sites foster this kind of treatment is stretching the truth a bit. These sites certainly enable such treatment to spread more rapidly, just as the framework also enables us to learn incredible fascinating and relevant pieces of information about a variety of topics at the speed of thought.  It is merely bad apples in a barrel, as Tim O’Reilly intimated in his interview with BBC’s Radio Five Live. I also firmly believe that his refusal to blog for a week in protest does nothing more than silence a voice that could be used in a better fashion. I think James Robertson has the right idea in his post, it is important to call someone out for bad behavior, not just give them the silent treatment. Does this feed their hunger for attention? Perhaps, but silence has never accomplished any meaningful change.

I urge us as bloggers to self-regulate, before this lands eventually in the hands of legislators and governments. We do not want this to become the focus of legal/governmental regulation, because as history as been our guide anytime the law and the internet collide it generally results in laws that are horribly inept and often draconian.

I agree with fellow VOXer JP that while services like VOX do have a Terms of Service that makes it possible for the service to remove hateful, violent and defamatory speech, it generally just means that users who are censored will go underground and resurface sometime later with a new IP address and screen name but an old agenda. It is the curse and the blessing that we enjoy on the internet with our perceived anonymity.

Chris Locke one of the people responsible for the now defunct site, The Mean Kids, where much of the violent language was originally posted is of course denying any responsibility for editing or censoring participants on a board that he was responsible for moderating.  I understand his concerns about censoring

Chris Locke

his users, as he explains on a post in his blog:

“With Mean Kids gone, I thought I’d have another go at it. After all, we were mostly having fun posting totally surreal stuff about nothing particularly relevant to anything or anyone. But again, there were a couple posts — the ones Kathy mentions in her post — that were over the top. I didn’t think for a minute that they were “threatening” — and again, they were not my doing — but when I saw mail from her objecting to them, I nuked the entire site rather than censor any individual.

I was a conference host on the Well 15 years ago where the core ethos was acronymized to YOYOW — You Own Your Own Words. This has remained a guiding principle for me ever since. I will not take responsibility for what someone else said, nor will I censor what another individual wrote. However, it was clear that Sierra was upset, so it seemed the best course to make the whole site go away.”

Indeed that WAS the ethos on the Well, and it was a pretty good one as most of the users tended to be self-governing.  I also commend him for finally realizing that the abuse was bad enough that it needed to be removed, but I fault him for not accepting responsibility as a moderator to act on these posts sooner, because make no mistake Mr. Locke, as a moderator or operator of a board, you indeed take on that level of responsibility whether you want it or not. It comes with the territory of a civilized society.

On that note, I agree with another fellow VOXer Chris Nixon that if we want Vox to remain a special place where people can feel uniquely safe to express their ideas, passions, hopes and fears, we must take responsibility and take action to self-regulate.

One of the participants has formally apologized to Ms. Sierra. Will the other three step up to the plate? I guess we can only wait and see.