Comments on: Behind the curtain: GigaOM debates @ComfortablySmug and web vigilantes

By: ceb

ceb — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 01:27:59 +0000

It’s one thing to self-regulate by outing @ComfortablySmug as a hoaxer. I think it’s another thing to out Shashank Tripathi as a hoaxer – especially if that causes him to lose his job.

By: Will White

Will White — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 21:12:20 +0000

I’m a big believer in competitive markets. In an environment where many users are competing on Twitter for eyeballs, it makes sense that @ComfortablySmug would be torn down for spreading false rumors during the crisis.

This guy was no just some schmo on the street or a guy at a bar, he was an operator with connections feeding information to important people. He had followers. The bigger you are in any medium, Twitter, TV, whatever, the bigger a target you are and the greater is your responsibility to guarantee the information you are spreading is at least plausibly accurate. He really just set himself up to be pwned … and he deserved it.

As far as comparisons to Jayson Blair, he just wasn’t that big and the damage he caused wasn’t nearly as bad (tarnishing the reputation of the NY Times is a big deal … although they don’t need much help with that these days) … so the damage to his career probably won’t be all that big. He might even get some props from his buddies in the conservative wankosphere.

Everyone publishing information to the public should think about two key items when participating in any media distribution … 1. “How big is the potential damage from what I am publishing?” and 2. “How broadly could this information go?’. Take these together to identify your own personal risk in publishing anything.

Quite simply, this was the market of ideas working. Let’s see more of this kind of thing.

By: A S

A S — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 20:51:13 +0000

You make great points, but I want to defend the troll also. Who did he send his tweets to? How many followers does he have? He is not the one who published any false information to the world. He was just trolling his friends/followers. Are people not allowed to make jokes with their friends on the Internet any more?

By: A S

A S — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 20:47:42 +0000

2000 years after Jesus, human beings still have problems walking in someone else’s shoes before casting stones and baying for blood.

By: Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 14:40:17 +0000

The challenge to what jjj says is that it justifies a return to a system where we have ‘trusted’ news sources, what they’re calling ‘the press’. That implies that there is an organized body that has the task of being responsible for what gets amplified and has a duty to weed out the nonsense. That goes directly against the freedom of expression that the Internet and social media bring us.

In a post-press world, we would self-regulate by outing the @ComfortablySmug’s. That’s exactly what happened. The question isn’t of who to blame, but of whether this is a dangerous trend decided by just a few powerful voices like BuzzFeed.

By: txpatriot

txpatriot — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 00:11:27 +0000

I don’t feel the least bit sorry for this guy. He’s an adult — he should act like one. Don’t do stupid things and you won’t suffer the consequences. What he did wasn’t an accident — it was deliberate. Responsible adults consider the consequences of their actions. Jerk-offs don’t and that’s why I waste not a single tear for this dumb@$$.

By: jjj

jjj — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 23:00:06 +0000

The odd part is that he is getting the heat, why require any kind of ethics from some random anonymous twitter account.? I know that everything on the internet is true but still…
If anyone should be shamed is the press,the so called pros that get payed to do a job. How many fake news and pictures have been published and televised? It’s their duty, their responsibility to have some kind of ethics and instead they just copy paste everything they find on the internet.They are the ones that should be a reliable source of information and making the fake news available to a large audience. So , maybe , if anyone gets to be charged , it should be the press.
Sure the troll has his own part of blame and my goal here is not to defend him or others like him, but there are 2B people on the internet and we’ll always have plenty of trolls, drunken people and so on,we shouldn’t expect all that much from every single internet user but we should expect more from the pres.