When words hurt: Fighting cyber cruelty

By Kelly Kazek
THE NEWS COURIER (ATHENS, Ala.)

ATHENS, Ala. August 28, 2007 10:17 am

— A teen who wanted only to memorialize her friend who was killed in a car wreck had a second lesson over the weekend in how cruel the world can be.
When KelleyH posted a slide show on YouTube of her friend Rene Brennan, 15, of Harvest, who was killed at 3:53 a.m. Saturday on Alabama 53, she could not have known some people would use the tragedy to be cruel.
Beneath the moving tribute set to Avril Lavigne’s song “When You’re Gone,” comments are posted from users that include one from username NigraJim — “B**** needs to learn2drive” — to one from S0SUBZ3R0 that makes sexual references about a corpse.
“It really made me mad,” said KelleyH, whose real name is being protected. “Here I was at the lowest point of my life because my best friend is gone and here were people saying they wanted to dig up her body and rape her. Now I realize they don’t have a life. I feel kind of bad for them now. Something bad must have happened in their life to make them act like that.”
When checking profiles of those who posted negative comments, most were males in the 20s from foreign countries, including Canada and the Netherlands.
Chad Brooks, an investigator with Madison County Sheriff’s Department, said the postings are not criminal.
“Unless there’s a person-to-person threat, which is the crime of harassing communications, they can say almost anything,” Brooks said. “YouTube is very problematic for law enforcement all the way around. When you’re willingly putting information out in the public domain for whatever response it gets…I would say don’t post.”
Athens Police Capt. Marty Bruce agreed law officers have difficulty policing the Internet and often do not know who is posting. In the case of Robert Bradley Tanksley, 19, who was arrested Friday for posting “kill an Athens cop today…” repeatedly on his MySpace site, investigators were able to determine who made the threat and to charge Tanksley with inciting to riot.
Tanksley told police he believed his postings were protected under the First Amendment right to free speech, Bruce said.
“A lot of times people have the wrong impression all speech is protected,” Bruce said. “Truly, not all speech is protected. There are some things that don’t fall under the First Amendment.”
Included in postings not protected as free speech are threats against a person, threats of hate crimes against others and enticing others into illegal acts.
YouTube describes in its policy: “We encourage free speech and defend everyone’s right to express unpopular points of view. But we don’t permit hate speech which contains slurs or the malicious use of stereotypes intended to attack or demean a particular gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, or nationality.”
A YouTube spokeswoman said its terms of use policy that users are asked to read before registering tells them how to monitor comments before allowing them to post, or users can disable the comments section altogether. KelleyH said she was unaware of this feature but planned to activate the monitoring system to use with the memorial video.



Cyber cruelty


Nancy Willard, executive director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use? and author of “Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens: Helping Young People Use the Internet Safely and Responsibly,” said the Internet provides a “you-can’t-see-me-I-can’t see you factor.”
“There’s the perception when we post something online we’re invisible, no one can see us,” she said. “When you’re invisible, you can engage in activity that might cause harm but the perception is that no one in authority knows who you are. It removes the fear of detection. It makes them oblivious to the potential harmful impact on those who lost a teenager. They have no remorse because they’re distanced from any concept of what harm they’re actually causing.”
Zetanor posted several negative comments to the site, including one that began: “If a video would be put on YouTube every time some retard no one cares about dies…”
When contacted on his YouTube site, Zetanor, who said his real name is Jean Morin and he is from Québec, wrote: “It’s the Internet, people are free to do whatever they want to do. Internet is full of ‘idiots’ like me, so it is obvious that if I posted something like this on a blog or on YouTube, people would do that to me. This is why I do not send or post these things, because only me and a small portion of people care, the rest would either ignore it or insult me.”
Willard said it is this idea that “anything goes” on the Internet that has led to an increase in cyber bullying, cyber crimes and cyber cruelty.
“There is this epidemic of cruelty online because of the ease with which anybody can publish anything,” she said. “It’s going to take significant efforts to try to address that degree of cruelty.”


Involvement is key


Curbing online cruelty will require putting technology in the hands of owners of sites such as YouTube and MySpace to quickly remove cruel postings as well as involvement from parents, Willard said.
“Parents need to be monitoring what their children are doing online, especially teens,” she said. “The bottom line is we’ve got to get teens and try to educate them about the harm they can cause and the real-world ramifications about what they’ve done.”
B.T. Drake, principal at Grissom High School where Rene Brennan attended before transferring to Sparkman Ninth Grade School earlier this month, said he has not seen the video or responses but he does encourage parents to take part in their children’s online lives.
“The parents have the challenging responsibility of monitoring their child’s access to and posting on the Internet beyond the school day,” he said, adding a parent Internet workshop will be at 6 tonight at the National Children’s Advocacy Center Training Auditorium at 210 Pratt Ave., in Huntsville. The information will be made available later to Grissom parents. “We have seen a need in this area in our community and have tentatively scheduled this presentation for our Parenting Day on Oct. 22.”
The program discusses navigating networking sites like MySpace and FaceBook and dealing with cyber bullies and online predators. Athens Police offer such seminars from time to time but do not currently have one scheduled, Bruce said.
“Unfortunately, being able to post stuff on the Internet anonymously, it’s really hard to track down people who do illegal things or things they shouldn’t,” he said. “It is important for parents to monitor their children, no matter what their age, because of potential of so many problems that can come about.”
Willard said she hopes to empower students to report problems.
“Empowering the bystanders is really one of most important strategies to address the problem because we adults are not spending hours online like they are,” she said. “The only way to deal with the situation is to try to encourage those confident, caring teens to speak out against it, to help someone who’s been targeted or to report problems.”
She also recommends not responding to those who are cruel.
“When somebody has posted something harmful online, the person who becomes upset by that should not engage in dialog with that person,” Willard said. “Sometimes, it’s appropriate to calmly tell that person to stop but it’s not going to work trying to communicate with them. If someone is that dedicated to being cruel, trying to communicate with them is not going to be effective. Filing a complaint with the site is more appropriate.”
Willard said most popular sites are responsible about monitoring content and typically remove harmful postings quickly, or give users the tools to remove them.
Brooks said parents should become involved before something harmful occurs.
“There are very little protections for a parent beyond preventive measures. They have to be involved,” he said. “The reactionary measures are not what we would like them to be. We know the law is not as encompassing as we would like in policing the Internet. Know what your children are doing online.”

Kelly Kazek writes for The News Courier in Athens, Ala.

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