Politicians and the Cyber-Bully Pulpit 392
Regular Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton has cyber-bullying on his mind; that and the laws proposed to deal with it. His article begins: "The authors of most of the recently proposed anti-cyberbullying laws have been invoking the tragic case of Megan Meier, the 13-year-old girl who committed suicide in 2006 after being harassed online by an adult neighbor posing as a cute 16-year-old boy. Unlike the bluster of politicians grandstanding to outlaw swearing on the Internet, the outrage and frustration of lawmakers in this case is at least understandable, especially after the FBI announced that the family that created the phony profile and caused Megan's suicide could not be charged with any crime. But the focus on Megan's case raises two questions: (a) whether it is fair to invoke Megan in the name of passing the laws, and (b) whether the laws are a good idea in general." Read more below.
For once, the invoking of the teenage victim of online stalking is probably not completely cynical. Sometimes, it is. In 2002, after 13-year-old cheerleader Christina Long was apparently killed by someone she met online, politicians purported to honor her memory by passing the "Dot Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act" to create the .kids.us domain space exclusively for content aimed at children 12 and under. Nobody with an ounce of sense could have truly believed that the existence a .kids.us domain would have prevented Christina Long's death (and certainly not the people who knew the facts of her case, since the police found that she had been actively looking for older sex partners online). In Megan Meier's case, at least the proposed laws are on-topic, and the authors probably really believe they will help. But will they?
Consider two laws proposed by state senators in Megan's home state of Missouri. Senate Bill 762, introduced by Sen. Yvonne Wilson, would require schools to adopt anti-cyberbullying policies. Sen. Scott Rupp has introduced Senate Bill 818, which would prohibit "cyber harassment" defined as conduct which "serves no legitimate purpose, that would cause a reasonable person to suffer substantial emotional distress, and that actually causes substantial emotional distress to that person", with increased penalties if committed by an adult over 21 against a minor under 17. Obviously the Wilson bill would not have applied in the Meier case, since the harassment was not committed by a real school student, but the bill could have still been inspired by an attempt to prevent future incidents caused by real students. The Rupp bill could apply to any teen-on-teen or even adult-on-adult harassment. So what actual effect would they have?
The Wilson bill punts the question by simply requiring school districts to set up anti-cyberbullying policies, but not specifying what would be prohibited or what the consequences would be. This is not to say that the state legislature should have micro-managed what school districts should prohibit, but there's no way to find fault with a bill that leaves the decisions up to someone else. However, any policy that attempts to regulate off-campus conduct would run into constitutional problems, as most cyber-bullying occurs outside of school (since Facebook and MySpace remain blocked to most students).
That leaves the Rupp bill, which is far more detailed, but still less than specific as far as people being able to read it and know in advance what kind of conduct is prohibited. Would it really criminalize any messages sent between teenagers that led to hurt feelings? The bill says that it does not apply to "constitutionally protected activity", falling into the general category of bills that say "This bill prohibits XYZ except that anything protected by the First Amendment isn't prohibited", supposedly so that people can't say the bill violates the First Amendment, but which really means that nobody knows what's allowed. The bill helpfully explains that "such constitutionally protected activity includes picketing or other organized protests", but since most cyberbullying does not take the form of tormentors sending their targets pictures of picket signs reading "ERIC IS GAY", this still doesn't help to determine what is permitted.
But there's something much more worrisome here. The conduct prohibited in the bill doesn't depend entirely on the message itself; it is restricted to content "that actually causes substantial emotional distress". Presumably this seemed like a good way to target the kinds of messages that caused Megan Meier to kill herself, without also outlawing all the other thousands of "You suck and I don't want to be your friend any more" sent between teenagers every day. But consider from the point of view of a message's recipient: At some point in the future, a victim of cyberbullying might know that other cases of cyberbullying have been prosecuted, but only in cases where they caused the victim "substantial emotional distress". So the law says to the victim: You can strike back against your tormentors, you can ruin their lives and let the world know what they did to you, but only if you harm yourself to prove they really hurt you.
And that's the basic Catch-22 of cyberbullying legislation: You can't prohibit meanness that causes someone to harm themselves, without also prohibiting the basic meanness that many teenagers put up with every day — unless you make the crime contingent on the victim actually harming themselves, in which case you've created hugely perverse incentives for them to do so.
I admit I don't have an easy answer either. The National Crime Prevention Center lists tips for teens to deal with cyberbulling: "(1) Refuse to pass along cyberbullying messages; (2) Tell friends to stop cyberbullying; (3) Block communication with cyberbullies; (4) Report cyberbullying to a trusted adult." Sorry, I'm sure they don't mean well, but if you're a teen and your problem is people saying hurtful things about you online to your friends, this is so unhelpful as to probably leave the victim feeling worse. 1 through 3 don't even address the problem, and "report it to an adult"? Most cyberbullying is not illegal.
So I would take the efforts that schools put into preventing cyberbullying — which may not deter the worst bullies, and which could be unconstitutional as applied to off-campus activity anyway — and reinvest them into teaching kids to deal with it: the self-esteem building programs which are much derided as political correctness run amok, but which can be judged a success if they help build resistance to bullying. Above all, put as much emphasis on tracking the results of esteem building programs, as on tracking the results of regular academic programs, so that statistics can be used to determine after the fact what kinds of programs are working best, rather than going in with preconceived notions. Learning how to deal with catty bitches ought to be treated as at least as important as learning the date when the Treaty of Ghent was signed. Out in the real world, there are still catty bitches, but nobody ever asks you about the Treaty of Ghent.
Fine line. (Score:3, Interesting)
My money would be on better education and awareness.
More laws? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Bullying" is not really prosecutable unless it has some actual effect on the person being bullied, e.g. simple assault, petty larceny, slander, etc.
At present, yes, it appears that "inciting someone to commit suicide" is not specifically a charge, but a minor alteration to an existing law--e.g. putting something of that sort under "manslaughter"--would more than suffice to prevent that particular effect in the future. Thus, it would also cover situations where someone convinced someone else to commit suicide in person, rather than passing some new unneeded law.
Re:DON'T BLAME OTHERS for your own acts (Score:5, Interesting)
1.) She was 13. I know now it's easy for adults, and extremely cynical teenagers, to say "Well, why didn't she just ignore it?" Well, in the case, the 'boy' spent months talking to her, gaining trust and personal information, before beginning to slam her and threaten her, and when you're 13 years old, the internets ARE serious business. You can't seriously be expected to just be able to brush off someone threatening to spread horrible lies about you in the school setting, where you will spend the next several years sandwiched between social layers.
2.) The parents did this because of a spat their daughter was having with Megan. Screw protecting kids online from bullying, how about we find a way to weed sociopaths like this out of the genetic pool, and certainly prevent them from having kids. What the hell is the other girl going to be like when she grows up? "I had an argument with a friend when I was 13, so my parents arranged for her to die. They didn't go to jail for that, so I guess it's ok!"
I know how much crap I ended up in in high school when I spread a TRUE story about someone online (I wasn't spreading it maliciously, it was just conversational) and in 'retaliation', the people involved started spreading some very creative lies about me. Maybe instead of passing laws to protect children from the horrors of assholes, we should be educating them at a PARENTAL LEVEL about the internet, "serious business", and the ability of "Ignore" features on most messaging software.
But that's just me.
Civil Law covers this (Score:5, Interesting)
online harassment (Score:5, Interesting)
Additionally, I don't believe we need any new laws to deal with this. At least I haven't personally seen a need yet. Generally, the existing harassment laws do just fine. They are already written broadly enough to cover "communications" via a number of methods. If someone communicates with you after you've told them you find their contact harassing, the law covers it, whether it's by phone, mail, in-person, or email. Special laws to cover the internet will only make it more difficult to do my job, and more importantly the job of the judges who ultimately make the decisions. And believe me, they are not well equipped to understand online material. Boiling it all down to "communications" is just easier. Court personal and prosecutors are already overworked in many areas, and complicating matters further will basically just mean that either other cases involving more traditional speech will have to be given a lower priority, or that none of it gets the attention it needs.
The one situation that's hard to handle is postings to other people's blogs that are unconnected to the recipient. Trying to analogize a blog posting is a bit difficult -- it's not like we've ever had much of a problem of people speaking bad of each other via physical billboards. But really, that's protected free speech, until it rises to the level of a treat. So essentially, the one situation a politician could conceivably attempt to control is basically impossible control due to that pesky constitution of ours (I know, politicians hate it).
Bottom line, leave the law alone. Stop grandstanding. And throw enough money at the judicial system to be able to spend enough time of each case, and give prosecutors the money to have enough people to pursue the cases that need the most attention. But I suppose it's a lot easier to "JUST THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN!!" by coming up with crazy laws, rather than simply funding courts.
Re:Darwin's invisible hand (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, for an adult, this may seem far-fetched -- most adults without preëxisting emotional problems would just shrug off emails from a former lover, without too many emotional issues. For teenagers, the situation is very different. The girl in this case was 13, but suppose that a slightly older girl (16?) who had just broken up with her boyfriend (considering the rate of sexual activity among high school students, such a break up could be difficult for our poor hypothetical girl) were to be harassed in the manner I outlined above. That could cause her serious emotional harm, and possibly drive her into a depression or into doing something really stupid.
It is hard enough to convince a full grown adult not to trust email and IM, even if it appears to be from someone they know. Teenagers will even more readily accept forged emails and IMs, and while that usually just means that botnet operators have easy targets, it also puts those teenagers at risk for cyber-bulling and manipulation. The neighbor in Megan's case took advantage of this fact to harass Megan, and the result was a tragic suicide. Instead of scoffing at the idea that anyone of any age would be foolish enough to trust messages sent over the Internet, you and everyone else making comments like this should be stopping to consider how you can explain the issues to a teenager (or someone who just doesn't have a clue).
an adult woman (Score:2, Interesting)
folks, this is not free speech. this yelling fire in a crowded theatre
men are often understood to be more violent than women. this is true, physically. two men will punch each other in the face. but then be friends 15 minutes later, all forgotten. but if you talk about social violence, women are orders of magnitude more violent than men. their social violence consists of month long campaigns, is complex, and deeply conceived. the social lives of women, and girls, are filled with so much outright deceit, prolonged volleys of malicious rumors, name calling, undermining of confidence and egos, ampping of and landmining of social support networks... its quite mind bobbling for a man to consider the world of female social violence. we really are simpler creatures compared to women. women's minds light up when blood flow is analyzed, men only have little pinpoints of activity. baby girls start talking earlier than baby boys. female humans, daily, have many more times the amount of social interaction than men do. the social world is the female's realm, social life is extremely important to females. and within the social realm, women and girls wage evil and war that us stupid simple men don't even perceive or understand or know why it is so important. we simply detach into nonsocial worlds of thought and laugh or puzzle at what the heck is going on and why it could ever be so important. women stay engaged socially constantly and craft skillsets and layers of meaning and nuance we never develop. and their weapons of war, and their vulnerable weak points, are their ego, and their confidence. it's all about social esteem and hierarchy. and it is deathly, deathly important. you laugh. i laugh. women don't laugh at this. and 13 year old girls most definitely do not laugh at this. the pursuit of social esteem to them is essential to their entire lives, an all consuming conflict, that most of us men aren't even aware of, blissfully i would say
so, i will go out on a limb and run myself contrary to slashdot consensus: i say, yes, you should limit and outlaw speech which is of the extreme utmost social violence this woman is guilty of
you don't yell fire in a crowded theatre. additionally, i think it should be illegal for an adult to maliciously destroy the emotional well-being of a child. that is what this woman did: psychologically terrorize this girl. she knew she was destroying this girl's psyche, and she gleefully executed her socially. a grown woman directly suggesting a suicidal girl kill herself. and she did this after deceiving her and inflating her confidence by pretending to be an interested boy, then she gleefully popped the girl's ego like a balloon. she knew she was squeezing the life out of this girl, and she did it. folks: this is WAY WAY beyond the most stupid boorish racist politically partisan inflamed troll thread you have ever read on any forum in your entire online life
for men, which you will find mostly on slashdot, this sort of vicious ego assassination is a strange world. so when us men try to process the implications of the acts that led to this girl's suicide, we see nothing but an attempt at censorship of simple hate speech. because that is the only way we know how to classify this odd event of this suicidal girl and the adult female neighbor. because us socially stupid men are equipped with very simple tools of social behavior. we don't even understand the nuance to consider very well what actually went on here. so we dismiss laws about this evil as just attempts at censorship
no, this is not about censorship. it is nothing like that
it is a gleeful assassination, by an adult, of a child's ego and confidence, that this adult woman knew was suicidal, and directly setting the child up to commit suicide, through a deeply preconceived, executed, and longstanding campaign of soc
Re:DON'T BLAME OTHERS for your own acts (Score:3, Interesting)
1. This theory [penny-arcade.com] holds quite true. The fact of the matter is the internet is full of idiots and assholes (as is the rest of the world).
2. There was this old saying we knew as kids, "Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me." (Or some variation thereof.) The fact is that she reacted to words. To a person she didn't really know and never interacted with outside of myspace.
3. Someone please show me a case where someone using words or pranks to "bully" someone not online resulted in a tragedy like this occurring and the "bullier" being tried for any crime. I think you'll be hard pressed to find one that isn't a fringe example.
Now to your points:
1. I know people who are "emotional basket cases" well into their 20s. Ignoring this though, how many of those "emotional basket case" girls kill themselves when they are dumped, either in reality or virtually? One girl killing herself does not a trend make.
2. Hang out with a lot of teenagers? I could've cared less about "social standing". I know others who had this same mentality. While it might seem "cruel" and this is probably in a realm where adults should stay out of influence, what she did is not illegal and should not be illegal. Jokes, pranks, name-calling happen every day. Thousand of kids live to tell about. Only a few kill themselves and/or others.
3. This is an issue with the parents and it largely centers around the view that they are unapproachable. I have known teenagers who were willing to discuss issues with their parents, including things that were bothering them. Parents should be somewhat involved in their children's lives, including having discussions with them if they feel something is not right.
4. This relates to a parenting issue again and again is related to item #3.
If a community decides to ostracize an individual over an incident like this, then it is well within their right; however, I do believe it shows some lack of thought behind their actions. I think our society is increasingly becoming one where we find other people to blame for our troubles. This woman's actions may have had some indirect influence on the child's death; however, the child obviously had some other issues to be dealt with if the "solution" she came up with was suicide. I refuse to place all the blame on this one individual.
While this event may have ended in tragedy, I do not believe we should be legislating against this sort of behavior; especially with laws that will invariably be poorly worded and will only result in hampering discussion online. I would like to think we don't want to live in a "nanny state".
Parental responsibility and the internet (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:DON'T BLAME OTHERS for your own acts (Score:3, Interesting)
Historically, although Jewish boys were considered responsible for their sins at the age of 13, they were not considered responsible enough to go out and live on their own for several years following the Bar Mitzvah ceremony.
Re:I think... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Questions (Score:3, Interesting)