I was cyber-bullied twice. From what David Margolick reports in his article "Slimed Online" in the March edition of PORTFOLIO, it would have been a waste of time to attempt to take legal action against my anonymous attackers. The law, as it stands now, tilts in favor of Free Speech. Opinion, which is the currency of the web, is classified as just that. And most posters are too savvy to cross that line into defamation or libel. Fortunately, there are other methods of reputation management.
The first attack was about three years ago on Mediabistro.com. The miscreants were anonymous posters on two bulletin boards [BB]. My crime? I took a top-down tone in hosting the BB discussion on marketing writing services. I was wrong. Digital is a horizontal medium. I have since never ever used that vertical approach again. Live and learn. Fortunately, aside from trauma over two days, there is no harm to my reputation. The posters weren't adept enough in manipulating search engines to get high rankings for their comments on sites such as Google.
My tactics - and they were effective - included:
- Controlling the conversation by posting on my own sites - here and here. It's throwing fire accelerator on the situation to respond on their sites. After doing that a few times, I realized I was only setting myself up. Lesson: In this era of digital mischief, it's imperative to have one's own platforms.
- Knowing legal terminology. The bullies are usually clueless about the law. Threatening to sue the anonymous posters stopped the harassment.
- Enlisting third parties. Others in my discipline posted on the web on my behalf. Since they knew their way around search engines, their posts received high rankings. Make friends in cyberspace. This posse can and will ride to your rescue.
The second attack occurred about 18 months ago. On my communications blog, I had discussed the suicide of an NYU freshman in negative terms. Lesson learned: Suicide is such a touchy subject, don't go near it. At least not until enlightened people can approach the topic without guilt. The worst kind of comments came into my blog. Friends of the suicide used Facebook to organize further kinds of attacks, including death threats via phone.
Here's how I ended the ordeal, with no damage to my electronic tail:
- Shutting down comment section on my communications blog. Waiting until situation calmed down before deleting comments which had been posted. Doing so immediately would have further inflamed the miscreants.
- Having another site available in which to present my point of view. Again, this is controlling the conversation. When I went to post on that other site I turned off the comment section. Operating multiple sites seems a necessity.
- Not responding to Facebook postings and phone calls.
- Threatening legal action on my second blog. That did the trick. It was as if I had turned on the light. The roaches scurried away.
Can cyber attacks be prevented? What I've figured out is those engaging in this kind of mischief are usually young and have too much time on their hands. Since I have not blogged on topics which concerns them I have not been flamed. Prevention could be that simple.
Note: With the job market so lousy, there are bound to be plenty of youth with too much time on their hands. Watch what you put online.
Comments