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Next version
| Version 5 | Version 6 |
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| A new internet age? Web users turn on 'trolls' | A new internet age? Web users turn on 'trolls' |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| When mourners arrived at the peace park in Maple Ridge, Vancouver, to pay tribute to Amanda Todd this week, few could have realised quite how widely the effects of the 15-year-old's death were being felt. | |
| News of her suicide, apparently as a result of years of cyberbullying, provoked the internet vigilante group Anonymous to reveal the personal details of the man it says tormented her under an online pseudonym. | |
| It came in the same week that an American journalist outed the real-life identity of one of the "biggest trolls on the web" as Michael Brutsch, a man accused of posting sexualised images of underage girls and graphic images of domestic violence on Reddit, the hugely popular open-source website now considered so influential it recently hosted a question and answer session with Barack Obama. | It came in the same week that an American journalist outed the real-life identity of one of the "biggest trolls on the web" as Michael Brutsch, a man accused of posting sexualised images of underage girls and graphic images of domestic violence on Reddit, the hugely popular open-source website now considered so influential it recently hosted a question and answer session with Barack Obama. |
| Does this represent a turning point in the history of the web, when the cloak of anonymity was torn away from internet trolls? | Does this represent a turning point in the history of the web, when the cloak of anonymity was torn away from internet trolls? |
| "This has been a wake-up call to the people who participate in these online communities to really think through what their responsibilities are," said Zeynep Tufekci, of the centre for information technology policy at Princeton University. The events surrounding the exposure of Brutsch's identity, as well as that of Todd's alleged tormentor, represent a sea change, according to Tufekci. "People are realising they cannot afford to have this 'live and let live' ethos to what is posted on their site. I feel like this is a social movement on a par with the Arab spring." | |
| Brutsch, 49, was outed as a prolifically offensive user of Reddit. Under the user name Violentacrez, he habitually published pictures of underage girls in a now defunct section called Jailbait. As well as creating forums under the names Chokeabitch, Niggerjailbait and Incest, Violentacrez was also responsible for the reviled Creepshot series, which published images of women and girls taken without their consent. | |
| A number of recent cases in the UK and Europe have brought to light a growing division in public opinion over the murky boundary between offensive online behaviour and freedom of speech. This month a Yorkshire man who posted an offensive Facebook message following the deaths of six British soldiers was given a community order. In July, a Welsh teenager was arrested after sending abusive tweets to the Olympic diver Tom Daley, but charges were later dropped. | |
| Adrian Chen, the journalist who exposed Brutsch, came under instant criticism from Reddit's moderators when the story broke. "We stand for free speech," said Reddit's Yishan Wong. "We are not going to ban distasteful subreddits [subsections]." But Chen, who works for Gawker, says the response to his story elsewhere has been "overwhelmingly positive". | |
| "I thought there would be more of a backlash about the story, but people really are willing to accept that anonymity is not a given on the internet and if people use pseudonyms to publish sexualised images of women without their consent, and of underage girls, then there's not really a legitimate claim to privacy," Chen told the Guardian. | |
| Aleks Krotoski, author of the forthcoming book Untangling the Web: What the Internet is Doing to You, believes we are entering a new phase of the internet age, one in which trolls can no longer pretend they are not part of the real world. "The rise of Facebook and Google ushered in an enormous number of people who hadn't previously used the web, and this has seen a shift in attitudes towards anonymity. Ten years ago people were used to having many different personas – at work, at home, with their friends. | |
| "During this time, fewer people used the internet and anonymity was the norm. Now that most people have an online identity on Facebook or the like, anonymity is regarded with suspicion and associated with hackers, abusive commentators and scammers." A recent example involved a man who called himself David Rose, inventing a life online as a deaf man with quadriplegia. His Dave on Wheels blog attracted a devoted audience, but soon after it became an internet hit, Dave "died". His fans were left bereft, doubly so when the entire episode was revealed to have been faked, allegedly by a 53-year-old man from San Francisco. | |
| "People themselves are becoming less and less inclined to be anonymous online because it is now associated with bad behaviour," said Krotoski. | "People themselves are becoming less and less inclined to be anonymous online because it is now associated with bad behaviour," said Krotoski. |
| Chen is keen to highlight a crucial difference in the way the man at the centre of the Amanda Todd case was outed and the story that unfolded around Michael Brutsch. "What Anonymous did by outing this guy was invite a mob response, which is no more responsible than abusing someone online in the first place," said Chen, who investigated Brutsch for many months before confronting him and Reddit. He pointed out that attacking a website which provides the structure for depravity and non-consensual sexualised imagery is very different from inviting the world to attack an individual whose guilt has not been proven. The Vancouver man named by Anonymous has denied responsibilty for the bullying. | |
| Wendy Grossman, a technology specialist who sits on the Open Rights Group committee, pointed to other dangers if anonymity online is undermined: Outing Michael Brutsch is absolutely justified for public interest. But the Todd case is clearly complex. Say, for example, Amanda Todd had used a pseudonym to seek help from a women's forum online because she already felt too vulnerable to use her real name. She would have been entitled to that privacy." | |
| Krotoski agreed. "Privacy is crucial to human development," she said, "but it is more and more scarce now that so much of the general population is online. But what these last few weeks show us is that we're entering a new phase of understanding about what is and isn't acceptable." | Krotoski agreed. "Privacy is crucial to human development," she said, "but it is more and more scarce now that so much of the general population is online. But what these last few weeks show us is that we're entering a new phase of understanding about what is and isn't acceptable." |
| Amanda Todd's story | Amanda Todd's story |
| Like many 12-year-olds, Vancouver teenager Amanda Todd liked going on chat rooms to meet people. When a stranger told her she was "perfect, beautiful, stunning", Todd was coerced into flashing her breasts for a man she did not know. That moment of naivety would contribute to her death suicide three years later. | Like many 12-year-olds, Vancouver teenager Amanda Todd liked going on chat rooms to meet people. When a stranger told her she was "perfect, beautiful, stunning", Todd was coerced into flashing her breasts for a man she did not know. That moment of naivety would contribute to her death suicide three years later. |
| The details of exactly what happened remain unclear, but Todd published a nine-minute video on YouTube that explained her story via a series of cue cards. | The details of exactly what happened remain unclear, but Todd published a nine-minute video on YouTube that explained her story via a series of cue cards. |
| A year after the webcam incident, a man contacted Todd on Facebook, claiming he had pictures of her exposed breasts and would publish them unless she "put on a show" for him. He carried out that threat and sent her picture to "everyone". Years of bullying followed. Todd changed schools twice but the picture continued to be circulated, possibly by the same man, to new friends wherever she went. Depression, substance abuse and self-harm preceded two suicide attempts before Todd finally had enough and took her own life on 10 October. She was 15. Police in Canada are investigating claims made by the "hacktivist" group Anonymous that a 32-year-old Vancouver man is responsible. | A year after the webcam incident, a man contacted Todd on Facebook, claiming he had pictures of her exposed breasts and would publish them unless she "put on a show" for him. He carried out that threat and sent her picture to "everyone". Years of bullying followed. Todd changed schools twice but the picture continued to be circulated, possibly by the same man, to new friends wherever she went. Depression, substance abuse and self-harm preceded two suicide attempts before Todd finally had enough and took her own life on 10 October. She was 15. Police in Canada are investigating claims made by the "hacktivist" group Anonymous that a 32-year-old Vancouver man is responsible. |
| Comments | Comments |
| 14 comments, displaying first | 14 comments, displaying first |
| 19 October 2012 7:00PM | 19 October 2012 7:00PM |
| This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs. | This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs. |
| 19 October 2012 7:15PM | 19 October 2012 7:15PM |
| Its long overdue zeroing the trolls, facebook and Twitter are hot beds of abuse, maybe it is time to operate pro-active moderation on social sites. These people are causing mental ill health, encouraging bullies, causing death and denigration of all types. Sadly there is no desire by Twitter or Facebook to do anything about it, they could at least refuse a twitter/facebook account without a valid address and name, then they can be ID'd and reported to the police. Those found guilty, banned for life operating on social sites again. Say no to the Anons. No name, no account. | Its long overdue zeroing the trolls, facebook and Twitter are hot beds of abuse, maybe it is time to operate pro-active moderation on social sites. These people are causing mental ill health, encouraging bullies, causing death and denigration of all types. Sadly there is no desire by Twitter or Facebook to do anything about it, they could at least refuse a twitter/facebook account without a valid address and name, then they can be ID'd and reported to the police. Those found guilty, banned for life operating on social sites again. Say no to the Anons. No name, no account. |
| Link to this comment: | Link to this comment: |
| 19 October 2012 7:17PM | 19 October 2012 7:17PM |
| This site was hit by a Republican troll spam attack after the second Presidential debate. One of the commenters Googled the first couple of lines from the post and found that it had been posted to just about every news and political blog on the net. Just Google : "Hello, my fellow American voters! I watched the Oct. 3rd and Oct. 16th presidential and Oct. 11th vice-presidential debates." and see what I mean. | This site was hit by a Republican troll spam attack after the second Presidential debate. One of the commenters Googled the first couple of lines from the post and found that it had been posted to just about every news and political blog on the net. Just Google : "Hello, my fellow American voters! I watched the Oct. 3rd and Oct. 16th presidential and Oct. 11th vice-presidential debates." and see what I mean. |
| Link to this comment: | Link to this comment: |
| 19 October 2012 7:29PM | 19 October 2012 7:29PM |
| Chen is keen to highlight a crucial difference in the way the man at the centre of the Amanda Todd case was outed and the story that unfolded around Michael Brutsch. "What Anonymous did by outing this guy was invite a mob response, which is no more responsible than abusing someone online in the first place," said Chen, who investigated Brutsch for many months before confronting him and Reddit. | Chen is keen to highlight a crucial difference in the way the man at the centre of the Amanda Todd case was outed and the story that unfolded around Michael Brutsch. "What Anonymous did by outing this guy was invite a mob response, which is no more responsible than abusing someone online in the first place," said Chen, who investigated Brutsch for many months before confronting him and Reddit. |
| That's just rubbish. By outing Michael Brutsch, Chen was also inviting a mob response and it is nothing short of hypocrisy to now condemn another outing for resulting in a mob response while apparently being oblivious of how your same action has resulted in the same outcome. The real difference between the two case is that Brutsch was only accused of posting images and texts that some or perhaps most people find offensive. The other guy is being accused of harrassing a teenager to the point of suicide. I know which one I'd think is far worse. | That's just rubbish. By outing Michael Brutsch, Chen was also inviting a mob response and it is nothing short of hypocrisy to now condemn another outing for resulting in a mob response while apparently being oblivious of how your same action has resulted in the same outcome. The real difference between the two case is that Brutsch was only accused of posting images and texts that some or perhaps most people find offensive. The other guy is being accused of harrassing a teenager to the point of suicide. I know which one I'd think is far worse. |
| Link to this comment: | Link to this comment: |
| 19 October 2012 7:36PM | 19 October 2012 7:36PM |
| Agree with the thrust of this article. Times are a changin'. | Agree with the thrust of this article. Times are a changin'. |
| Both Google + (more than 400 million followers) and Facebook are social networks that require real ID to post. Most other sites cater for anonymity. Last year The Atlantic ran an interesting story on the trends here too: | Both Google + (more than 400 million followers) and Facebook are social networks that require real ID to post. Most other sites cater for anonymity. Last year The Atlantic ran an interesting story on the trends here too: |
| http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/why-facebook-and-googles-concept-of-real-names-is-revolutionary/243171/# | http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/why-facebook-and-googles-concept-of-real-names-is-revolutionary/243171/# |
| Link to this comment: | Link to this comment: |
| 19 October 2012 8:28PM | 19 October 2012 8:28PM |
| I feel like this is a social movement on a par with the Arab Spring | I feel like this is a social movement on a par with the Arab Spring |
| ...and the Nobel Prize for Hyperbole goes to Zeynep Tufekci. | ...and the Nobel Prize for Hyperbole goes to Zeynep Tufekci. |
| Link to this comment: | Link to this comment: |
| 19 October 2012 8:52PM | 19 October 2012 8:52PM |
| Krotoski agreed. "Privacy is crucial to human development," she said, "but it is more and more scarce now that so much of the general population is online. But what these last few weeks show us is that we're entering a new phase of understanding about what is and isn't acceptable." | Krotoski agreed. "Privacy is crucial to human development," she said, "but it is more and more scarce now that so much of the general population is online. But what these last few weeks show us is that we're entering a new phase of understanding about what is and isn't acceptable." |
| What nonsense, privacy is a 21st/20th century luxury dreamed up in the West. It not essential to human development and humans have been developing okay for the past few millions years with far less privacy than we have today, most of us have our own rooms, our own loos, our own bedrooms, our own cloths, this is not the norm in the history of human development, Even a hundred years ago 5 people sleeping in a single bedroom was the norm, and you have zero privacy in that situation. | What nonsense, privacy is a 21st/20th century luxury dreamed up in the West. It not essential to human development and humans have been developing okay for the past few millions years with far less privacy than we have today, most of us have our own rooms, our own loos, our own bedrooms, our own cloths, this is not the norm in the history of human development, Even a hundred years ago 5 people sleeping in a single bedroom was the norm, and you have zero privacy in that situation. |
| Link to this comment: | Link to this comment: |
| 19 October 2012 10:54PM | 19 October 2012 10:54PM |
| What's next? An end to the secret ballot? Political disputes require privacy so the average person can make his views known without fear of retribution. | What's next? An end to the secret ballot? Political disputes require privacy so the average person can make his views known without fear of retribution. |
| Link to this comment: | Link to this comment: |
| 19 October 2012 11:38PM | 19 October 2012 11:38PM |
| People should have the right to speak their mind freely through the net and in the real life too. It's just far easier to take a nickname and say things you wouldn't dare saying otherwise. That's coward. I think "virtual life" has now become an active part of everyone's life, so it's impossible to divide the real from the virtual, but we should still have common sense and more importantly humanity. I've seen a lot of trolling actions during my "virtual life experience", but I've never heard of anything like the Todd case. I'm shoked! Even if you have the right to be free on the net ("I don't agree with you, but I'd gladily die to let you express it" [cit.] Voltaire) it's not like you can reach such points! In these cases I really prefer these people to be caught and put in jail for a long, long time. To bully someone that badly.....just for your laugh sake....makes you worse than an animal! | People should have the right to speak their mind freely through the net and in the real life too. It's just far easier to take a nickname and say things you wouldn't dare saying otherwise. That's coward. I think "virtual life" has now become an active part of everyone's life, so it's impossible to divide the real from the virtual, but we should still have common sense and more importantly humanity. I've seen a lot of trolling actions during my "virtual life experience", but I've never heard of anything like the Todd case. I'm shoked! Even if you have the right to be free on the net ("I don't agree with you, but I'd gladily die to let you express it" [cit.] Voltaire) it's not like you can reach such points! In these cases I really prefer these people to be caught and put in jail for a long, long time. To bully someone that badly.....just for your laugh sake....makes you worse than an animal! |
| Link to this comment: | Link to this comment: |
| 19 October 2012 11:40PM | 19 October 2012 11:40PM |
| It is heartbreaking to read what happened to that young girl. I hope those that are responsible pay an appropriate price. There is no place in society for people like that. | It is heartbreaking to read what happened to that young girl. I hope those that are responsible pay an appropriate price. There is no place in society for people like that. |
| Link to this comment: | Link to this comment: |
| 19 October 2012 11:42PM | 19 October 2012 11:42PM |
| Moderator sense of humour fail. | Moderator sense of humour fail. |
| That's why the trolls will always win. | That's why the trolls will always win. |
| Link to this comment: | Link to this comment: |
| 19 October 2012 11:57PM | 19 October 2012 11:57PM |
| it is isolation that brings these individuals to a point where they feel safe enough to torment. to view the interenet as merely an extension of humanity seems appropriate, but however exponentially we are brought together by it, we are also divided by it. | it is isolation that brings these individuals to a point where they feel safe enough to torment. to view the interenet as merely an extension of humanity seems appropriate, but however exponentially we are brought together by it, we are also divided by it. |
| slow the highspeed world as often as possible. live where you are. | slow the highspeed world as often as possible. live where you are. |
| Link to this comment: | Link to this comment: |
| 20 October 2012 12:15AM | 20 October 2012 12:15AM |
| So should Anonymous be anonymous?? IF they are wrong about the man accused of harrassing young Amanda Todd [and that may be a big IF] then shouldn't they be outed too? Or at least obliged to take responsibility for their actions. I'm not saying they didn't do something vital and praiseworthy, but at least Mr Chen above has put his name [I assume it's the correct one!] behind his actions. PS fulhamfan is my real name - sad. | So should Anonymous be anonymous?? IF they are wrong about the man accused of harrassing young Amanda Todd [and that may be a big IF] then shouldn't they be outed too? Or at least obliged to take responsibility for their actions. I'm not saying they didn't do something vital and praiseworthy, but at least Mr Chen above has put his name [I assume it's the correct one!] behind his actions. PS fulhamfan is my real name - sad. |
| Link to this comment: | Link to this comment: |
| 20 October 2012 12:49AM | 20 October 2012 12:49AM |
| I just read this story from Raw Story in the US. Oddly enough, I was censored from Raw Story the same time that my newspaper , Bangor Daily News also censored me. Seems as if the new tea party governor had a hired possee who just loved him. Bunch of crazies who spew hate and also hate a fact. Raw Story and Bangor Daily News both use Disqus. This all happened about the same time the Pentagon spent a lot of money for cyber security. Cyber security seems to entail paying a lot of idiots to spew hate. The Guardian allows much more freedom of discussion than so called US progressive websites who all dislike and censor for writing about | I just read this story from Raw Story in the US. Oddly enough, I was censored from Raw Story the same time that my newspaper , Bangor Daily News also censored me. Seems as if the new tea party governor had a hired possee who just loved him. Bunch of crazies who spew hate and also hate a fact. Raw Story and Bangor Daily News both use Disqus. This all happened about the same time the Pentagon spent a lot of money for cyber security. Cyber security seems to entail paying a lot of idiots to spew hate. The Guardian allows much more freedom of discussion than so called US progressive websites who all dislike and censor for writing about |
| 1) election theft 2) 9/11 discussion on anything which isn't strictly gov. issued 3) the word fascism HMMMMM | 1) election theft 2) 9/11 discussion on anything which isn't strictly gov. issued 3) the word fascism HMMMMM |
| Link to this comment: | Link to this comment: |
| Reddit user Violentacrez fired from job after Gawker exposé | Reddit user Violentacrez fired from job after Gawker exposé |
| 16 Oct 2012 | 16 Oct 2012 |
| The Reddit user whose identity was revealed in an extensive Gawker exposé has revealed that he was fired from his job at the weekend | The Reddit user whose identity was revealed in an extensive Gawker exposé has revealed that he was fired from his job at the weekend |
| 31 Aug 2012 | 31 Aug 2012 |
| Trolls game Taylor Swift competition in favor of school for the hearing impaired | Trolls game Taylor Swift competition in favor of school for the hearing impaired |
| 18 Jan 2012 | 18 Jan 2012 |
| Sopa support drops off as blackout protest rattles the internet | Sopa support drops off as blackout protest rattles the internet |
| 18 Jan 2012 | 18 Jan 2012 |
| Sopa blackout and day of action - as it happened | Sopa blackout and day of action - as it happened |
| 21 Jul 2010 | 21 Jul 2010 |
| Reddit bugged at web metrics' inaccuracy - as everyone could be | Reddit bugged at web metrics' inaccuracy - as everyone could be |
| Facebook forced to tighten up privacy rules | Facebook forced to tighten up privacy rules |
| 27 Aug 2009 | 27 Aug 2009 |
| Users' control over personal data will be increased following complaints from Canada's privacy commissioner | Users' control over personal data will be increased following complaints from Canada's privacy commissioner |
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| Two recent online 'outings' suggest that attitudes towards online anonymity may have shifted | Two recent online 'outings' suggest that attitudes towards online anonymity may have shifted |
| When mourners arrived at the peace park in Maple Ridge, Vancouver, to pay tribute to Amanda Todd this week, few could have realised quite how widely the effects of the 15-year-old's death were being felt. | |
| News of her suicide, apparently as a result of years of cyberbullying, provoked the internet vigilante group Anonymous to reveal the personal details of the man it says tormented her under an online pseudonym. | |
| It came in the same week that an American journalist outed the real-life identity of one of the "biggest trolls on the web" as Michael Brutsch, a man accused of posting sexualised images of underage girls and graphic images of domestic violence on Reddit, the hugely popular open-source website now considered so influential it recently hosted a question and answer session with Barack Obama. | It came in the same week that an American journalist outed the real-life identity of one of the "biggest trolls on the web" as Michael Brutsch, a man accused of posting sexualised images of underage girls and graphic images of domestic violence on Reddit, the hugely popular open-source website now considered so influential it recently hosted a question and answer session with Barack Obama. |
| Does this represent a turning point in the history of the web, when the cloak of anonymity was torn away from internet trolls? | Does this represent a turning point in the history of the web, when the cloak of anonymity was torn away from internet trolls? |
| "This has been a wake-up call to the people who participate in these online communities to really think through what their responsibilities are," said Zeynep Tufekci, of the centre for information technology policy at Princeton University. The events surrounding the exposure of Brutsch's identity, as well as that of Todd's alleged tormentor, represent a sea change, according to Tufekci. "People are realising they cannot afford to have this 'live and let live' ethos to what is posted on their site. I feel like this is a social movement on a par with the Arab spring." | |
| Brutsch, 49, was outed as a prolifically offensive user of Reddit. Under the user name Violentacrez, he habitually published pictures of underage girls in a now defunct section called Jailbait. As well as creating forums under the names Chokeabitch, Niggerjailbait and Incest, Violentacrez was also responsible for the reviled Creepshot series, which published images of women and girls taken without their consent. | |
| A number of recent cases in the UK and Europe have brought to light a growing division in public opinion over the murky boundary between offensive online behaviour and freedom of speech. This month a Yorkshire man who posted an offensive Facebook message following the deaths of six British soldiers was given a community order. In July, a Welsh teenager was arrested after sending abusive tweets to the Olympic diver Tom Daley, but charges were later dropped. | |
| Adrian Chen, the journalist who exposed Brutsch, came under instant criticism from Reddit's moderators when the story broke. "We stand for free speech," said Reddit's Yishan Wong. "We are not going to ban distasteful subreddits [subsections]." But Chen, who works for Gawker, says the response to his story elsewhere has been "overwhelmingly positive". | |
| "I thought there would be more of a backlash about the story, but people really are willing to accept that anonymity is not a given on the internet and if people use pseudonyms to publish sexualised images of women without their consent, and of underage girls, then there's not really a legitimate claim to privacy," Chen told the Guardian. | |
| Aleks Krotoski, author of the forthcoming book Untangling the Web: What the Internet is Doing to You, believes we are entering a new phase of the internet age, one in which trolls can no longer pretend they are not part of the real world. "The rise of Facebook and Google ushered in an enormous number of people who hadn't previously used the web, and this has seen a shift in attitudes towards anonymity. Ten years ago people were used to having many different personas – at work, at home, with their friends. | |
| "During this time, fewer people used the internet and anonymity was the norm. Now that most people have an online identity on Facebook or the like, anonymity is regarded with suspicion and associated with hackers, abusive commentators and scammers." A recent example involved a man who called himself David Rose, inventing a life online as a deaf man with quadriplegia. His Dave on Wheels blog attracted a devoted audience, but soon after it became an internet hit, Dave "died". His fans were left bereft, doubly so when the entire episode was revealed to have been faked, allegedly by a 53-year-old man from San Francisco. | |
| "People themselves are becoming less and less inclined to be anonymous online because it is now associated with bad behaviour," said Krotoski. | "People themselves are becoming less and less inclined to be anonymous online because it is now associated with bad behaviour," said Krotoski. |
| Chen is keen to highlight a crucial difference in the way the man at the centre of the Amanda Todd case was outed and the story that unfolded around Michael Brutsch. "What Anonymous did by outing this guy was invite a mob response, which is no more responsible than abusing someone online in the first place," said Chen, who investigated Brutsch for many months before confronting him and Reddit. He pointed out that attacking a website which provides the structure for depravity and non-consensual sexualised imagery is very different from inviting the world to attack an individual whose guilt has not been proven. The Vancouver man named by Anonymous has denied responsibilty for the bullying. | |
| Wendy Grossman, a technology specialist who sits on the Open Rights Group committee, pointed to other dangers if anonymity online is undermined: Outing Michael Brutsch is absolutely justified for public interest. But the Todd case is clearly complex. Say, for example, Amanda Todd had used a pseudonym to seek help from a women's forum online because she already felt too vulnerable to use her real name. She would have been entitled to that privacy." | |
| Krotoski agreed. "Privacy is crucial to human development," she said, "but it is more and more scarce now that so much of the general population is online. But what these last few weeks show us is that we're entering a new phase of understanding about what is and isn't acceptable." | Krotoski agreed. "Privacy is crucial to human development," she said, "but it is more and more scarce now that so much of the general population is online. But what these last few weeks show us is that we're entering a new phase of understanding about what is and isn't acceptable." |
| Amanda Todd's story | Amanda Todd's story |
| Like many 12-year-olds, Vancouver teenager Amanda Todd liked going on chat rooms to meet people. When a stranger told her she was "perfect, beautiful, stunning", Todd was coerced into flashing her breasts for a man she did not know. That moment of naivety would contribute to her death suicide three years later. | Like many 12-year-olds, Vancouver teenager Amanda Todd liked going on chat rooms to meet people. When a stranger told her she was "perfect, beautiful, stunning", Todd was coerced into flashing her breasts for a man she did not know. That moment of naivety would contribute to her death suicide three years later. |
| The details of exactly what happened remain unclear, but Todd published a nine-minute video on YouTube that explained her story via a series of cue cards. | The details of exactly what happened remain unclear, but Todd published a nine-minute video on YouTube that explained her story via a series of cue cards. |
| A year after the webcam incident, a man contacted Todd on Facebook, claiming he had pictures of her exposed breasts and would publish them unless she "put on a show" for him. He carried out that threat and sent her picture to "everyone". Years of bullying followed. Todd changed schools twice but the picture continued to be circulated, possibly by the same man, to new friends wherever she went. Depression, substance abuse and self-harm preceded two suicide attempts before Todd finally had enough and took her own life on 10 October. She was 15. Police in Canada are investigating claims made by the "hacktivist" group Anonymous that a 32-year-old Vancouver man is responsible. | A year after the webcam incident, a man contacted Todd on Facebook, claiming he had pictures of her exposed breasts and would publish them unless she "put on a show" for him. He carried out that threat and sent her picture to "everyone". Years of bullying followed. Todd changed schools twice but the picture continued to be circulated, possibly by the same man, to new friends wherever she went. Depression, substance abuse and self-harm preceded two suicide attempts before Todd finally had enough and took her own life on 10 October. She was 15. Police in Canada are investigating claims made by the "hacktivist" group Anonymous that a 32-year-old Vancouver man is responsible. |