Online anonymity lets users get nasty

Branum’s case fueled debate at the Orange County Register, whose Web site had only recently added a public comment section after news stories. OCRegister.com deputy editor Jeff Light says the site has modified its message board, only six weeks old, in response to staff concerns about inappropriate posts. Now, among other changes, language is more specific about what the site expects from those who post, and how a comment can be deleted.

Ideally, Light says, it’s the users, not the site’s operators, that should determine what is discussed, and how. “The comment area is not a journalistic space,” he says. “The point is for people to react freely.”

And Yahoo News took down its message boards completely in December, with the goal of finding a new system that doesn’t let a small group of vocal users dominate the discourse. “Our hope is to raise the value of the conversation,” says Yahoo spokesman Brian Nelson.

Harm can be much greater when people are singled out by name on the Web; such attacks can hurt someone’s career or home life. One entrepreneur is trying to help people recover from such attacks with a company he started last year: ReputationDefender.

“It takes one person 20 minutes to destroy your reputation, and it costs them nothing,” says Michael Fertik, who employs about 40 part-time “agents” on what he calls “search and destroy” missions against unwarranted Internet attacks. “It can take you 200 hours to try to clean it up.”

Fertik, who says his is the only company providing such a service, has clients ranging from victims of unfair comments on dating Web sites to people who feel they’ve been mistreated on MySpace.com. He also is helping several female law students fight what they call defamatory sexist and racist comments on a message board widely read in the legal community. Their story was reported earlier this month by The Washington Post.

Fertik says he offers “a PR service for the everyday person,” charging a fee that can be as low as $10 monthly, for a thorough search of Internet references. The “destroy” part starts with a polite letter and can occasionally lead to threatened legal action. (Generally, Web site operators are not liable for offensive postings.)

One person who takes it pretty much in stride is Branum, the California woman who was unaware she was pregnant until Feb. 26, two days before she gave birth. Her sister had alerted the newspaper to the story. Neither of them anticipated the nasty comments that rolled in.

But, Branum says, “it’s America. People are going to say what they’re going to say. It’s going to be everywhere, and you can’t stop it. Anybody’s allowed.” She says the flip side was the posts that came in defending her — and the cards and letters from people she didn’t know, wishing her luck.

Her fiance was less forgiving, even calling the paper to complain. Branum said she had a simple response for him: “Deal with it.”

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