This case is one particularly horrific example of why Facebook et al have the right idea. No more pseudonyms. You should be as accountable for what you do online as you are standing in front of someone.
A federal indictment accuses Lori Drew, 49, of O’Fallon, Missouri, of using the social networking Web site MySpace.com to pose as a 16-year-old boy and feign romantic interest in the girl.
The girl, Megan Meier, committed suicide after her online love interest spurned her, according to prosecutors, telling her the world would be a better place without her.
Megan Meier was 13. She hung herself with a belt.
If you want to wander through the global village, you don’t get to wear a mask.
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2 responses so far ↓
1 Eoin Purcell // May 16, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Hear, Hear Richard,
Total Agreement!
Eoin
2 Jon Ihle // May 16, 2008 at 2:53 pm
It will be interesting to see how this gets prosecuted. I’m doubtful they’ll get anywhere with the conspiracy charge, since the underlying ‘crime’ - spurning a teenage girl after leading her on - would open literally millions of teenage boys to indictment.
On a more abstract level, I’m intrigued by your insistence that nobody be allowed to wear masks online. In other words, teh intertubes should duplicate physical reality - at least in terms of personal identity. Leaving aside the thorny question of whether people are ever without a mask, surely you concede that the blogosphere is a giant collective exercise in virtual personae - real names or not. Do you regard the internet as merely a new medium for information exchange or as a new sphere of existence?
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