Fired by Facebook

Inseparable from the Internet is the message board.

The two of them together are Mick and Keith. Peanut butter and jelly. Apple and the smartphone.

Not long into the advent of message boards, journalist purists lamented them. It was more instant than a Keurig coffee.

Clearly it was not because of opposition to free speech. That is our daily diet.

We encounter an astounding amount of free speech that is unhealthy and impure. Just bad.

Some of it gets submitted to us for publication, and we reject it. Those folks will yell at us then – charging that we are denying their free-speech rights.

I help them. There are street corners, I’ll say. There are plenty, in fact. And each is an opportunity for free speech. Have at it.

Message boards are digital street corners.

Like any community, some message-board corners are cool and helpful; many are not. It’s the anonymity of the participants and the volume of hate they spew due to anonymity.

The “online disinhibition effect” is what one really smart guy called it pretty early – 2004. Psychologist John Suler of Rider University explained the effect this way in his study: “the loosening of social restrictions and inhibitions that would otherwise be present in normal face-to-face interaction.”

This is not a new phenomenon – speaking more recklessly when you know no one knows who you are.

In the 1970s, when CB radios exploded in popularity, there were numerous complaints about the vile language and stupidity spewed along those lines.

And today, it’s the Internet and its message boards – and most of us on the journalist side of free speech hate it.

Thus in 2008ish, when Facebook emerged, it seemed like a great message-board correction.

Facebook works hard at (mostly) ensuring a “real name” policy for users. You are supposed to sign up by the name people know you by, and not, say, “Ytown2010.” Users are encouraged to report fake names.

With real names attached, discourse and public display would be more civil, right?

Sure.

Social media, primarily Facebook and its younger neighbor Twitter, are as awash in bullying, vitriol and abuse as message boards ever were.

Thus we should get used to reading the story we reported this month.

A young Poland woman was arrested on a charge involving assaulting a man. Oddly, she was not the assailant. She merely arranged for him to be beaten by another guy.

Why?

Allegedly, the beaten guy had naked pictures of her on his phone. And with those photos, he threatened her: Stop having sex with him, and the photos would be shared on social media.

This story was one of our most read when it came out. Some readers expressed what I, too, was thinking: The guy with the photos is not getting charged?

While clearly he had no care for the woman except for sex, he also had no care (or awareness) of the measure sure to be taken of him.

Nice son. Nice brother. Nice employee.

If assaulting social media bullies gets you arrested, perhaps try what Australian journalist Clementine Ford did. She’s outspoken; a feminist; and per one commenter onto her Facebook page – a slut.

Ford used social media to make the commenter’s employer aware of his coarse verbal attack. Last week, the employer fired him.

I actually like Ford’s tact and have used it here at The Vindy with some trolls.

Back here in Boardman, per the police, the guy – or the “victim” – allegedly ready to post naked photos of the woman still might get charged in the incident.

Granted – neither of them were acting brilliantly.

But in the court of public opinion, I would say most guilty there is the guy with the photos.

The things that people will say or share on social media with their names attached would be funny if it weren’t so real, tragic and harmful.

Andrew Hamilton was the colonist lawyer who, in 1735, won a case that many tout as the first steps toward acceptance of freedom of speech/expression. He, too might be shattered at what some people have done with the rights he galvanized.

Todd Franko is editor of The Vindicator. He likes emails about stories and our newspaper. Email him at tfranko@vindy.com. He blogs, too, on Vindy.com. Tweet him, too, at @tfranko.