Authors And The Ethics Of Social Media

[Carol Rose]

Interesting article with far-reaching applications. Can't say I agree with everything she's written, but she does make some valid points.

http://annetenino.com/2015/11/23/authors-the-ethics-of-social-media/

 

[Jason Byrne]

So I read the introduction and then jumped down to the flow chart, but about four years ago my wife was big into the CNN news article discussion forums, and had a group of friends much like it is here on Litopia. And there was an infamous poster named Creep Star, or some such, who made dozens or hundreds of personas, and say the most vile, offensive, and insane things you can imagine. And he portrayed each name slightly differently.

She became like a professional creep-slayer, spotting his different aliases and getting them shut down before he could cause chaos, because she really liked discussing news with her group of friends. Until it turned out that one of those friends had been a much more low-profile incarnation of this same guy, pretending to be a very old woman from Alabama, or something. He would make Facebook profiles for these people, and interact with different social circles as each of them. Except when he forgot about this old lady persona, and she stopped interacting with her friends, they all panicked thinking she had died, and tried to find a way to reach her.

What possess people to do things like this, I wonder? A pen name makes sense in some situations. A pen name that you pretend is a real, living person with a contrived life that you maintain as an alter ego is different territory.

 

[Marc Joan]

Interesting. Personally, I'd like to hide behind a faceless pseudonym forever, but that may not be realistic, especially since Jason outed me as Mark Rothko. Oops, there goes the truth again, flying all around, subtle as a deflating balloon....

 

[Carol Rose]

I have no idea why people do things like this, but it's as old as the Internet is. When I was on Classmates quite a bit in the late 1990s/early 2000s, I watched a woman get kicked off the site for abusive behavior three times in the space of a few months, and all three times she joined again - to the tune of $30 a year each time - under a slightly different name. She'd then post all over the groups, dropping hints she was the same person. She wanted to get caught. It was so freaking bizarre.

Once when I was on the Weight Watchers boards online, there was a woman who was so abusive and nasty to everyone that everyone knew who she was, even if they didn't post on the boards she usually did. She was that notorious. She'd join under fake personas - and again this costs MONEY - and "talk" to herself under the false personalities, posing as a troll who only targeted her each time. Every time she was called out on this she'd deny it, but then that particular troll would suddenly disappear, only to be replaced by a new one a few days later. They never targeted anyone but her, and the conversations were too personal, plus the writing style was so similar, that it was obvious she was posing as these other people.

More recently, another author and I were the victims of a romance author who takes making fake personas on Facebook and Goodreads to a higher level. He made them faster than we could out them, joining Facebook groups where one or both of us were admins, stirring up trouble, and then reporting our pen names as "fake." Gotta love the irony of that. LOL!!

He also would one-star all our books on Goodreads under each of the fake names. I finally emailed Goodreads, sending them links to the FOUR DOZEN PLUS names I had uncovered, advising them that there were probably more, letting them know about the same names on Facebook and what he was doing with them, and asked them to get their IT people on it and see if the names all originated from the same IP address. What a shock (NOT!) that they did, and he was banned under all his names, including his author profile. He tried for almost a year to keep making new profiles, and every time I'd find them and send the links to Goodreads they'd delete the profile.

In the middle of all that nonsense, he sent me an email from a fake account that I didn't open because my preview pane showed me the beginning of the message: "Having fun yet blocking all those accounts from your Goodreads profile?" Right. Dude thought if he'd sent it from a fake account I wouldn't know it was him? LOL!!

He also sent an email to the other author, disclosing her address and threatening to burn down her house. She's online under her real name as well, and is very open about who she is in real life, but I'm not. She filed a police report, but he lives closer to me in real life than to her, so she wasn't really worried about him following through. She merely wanted a paper trail in case he did more stuff to her.

So yeah, this happens A LOT. It's freaking crazy. I don't understand it and I never will. You can be as careful as possible online and you still might be talking to a nut job and never know it.

 

[Stephen Drake]

I've chosen to be who I am. That way I don't need to try to keep a bunch of facts straight. I'm not smart enough to pretend to be someone I'm not.

 

[Marc Joan]

I've chosen to be who I am. That way I don't need to try to keep a bunch of facts straight. I'm not smart enough to pretend to be someone I'm not.

A clever bluff, but you're not fooling ME, I know you're really MontanaMan.

 

[Stephen Drake]

A clever bluff, but you're not fooling ME, I know you're really MontanaMan.

Very funny! I meant as an author.

 

[Robinne Weiss]

Interesting article. Of course, everyone knows I'm actually a weevil, not a preying mantis, so that's alright...

But seriously, I will admit that I steered well clear of social media for a long time for these very reasons. Professional demands drove me on to Facebook and Linked In and Twitter... And I still refuse to let anyone friend me on Facebook unless I actually know them in 'real life' (and in fact I've refused some of them, too...). Maybe that's antisocial, but it's also self-defense. I know that the day I get seriously trolled is the day I go completely off line. I appreciate the ability to use social media to connect professionally with others, and to keep in touch with family and friends who I wouldn't "see" otherwise. I'd be sorry to lose that, but I'd vanish from the internet in a minute if it came to it. (You've been warned...if I disappear, I'm not necessarily dead. )

 

[Paul Whybrow]

I'm stating the obvious here, but it pays to be cautious with what you divulge on any social media sites. Identity theft is rife, so although we all strive to be honest it's silly to give every detail of your life away. This can include seemingly innocuous trivia such as what your first school was called, as this might be the missing piece of information needed to access your bank account, as you'd chosen it as your secret question.

Two friends of mine have been the victims of major identity fraud, discovering afterwards that they'd helped the thieves by giving them the information they needed on their social media profiles. One had £38,000 stolen, after her credit and debit cards were cloned while she was on holiday - probably by waiters and shop staff. My other friend had half-a-dozen mortgage applications made in her name, all based on the comprehensive information she'd put out there on social media. Both of them have become much more circumspect in what they reveal, fibbing about their dates and place of birth for instance.

Trolling is beyond my comprehension. I helped to manage a community centre for four years, which had a free computer suite. This was a fantastic service for the town, but we got our share of freaks and weirdos. These included a man who created false profiles on dating agencies, pretending to be attractive women. He'd get lots of admirers and string them along, while being vicious in what he said about them. I couldn't work out his motivation for doing so, wondering if he yearned for a sex change! I decided that he was simply nasty, and when I caught him emailing underage teens barred him from the building, passing on my suspicions to the police. It turned out he was well known for this borderline activity, and after some pressure was put on him, he left town.

They walk among us!

(But we're all perfectly normal - right?)

 

[Carol Rose]

I can't avoid social media altogether or I wouldn't have any readers left. LOL! But I'm very, very careful, and these days I'm very, very picky about who I friend on Facebook or follow on Twitter. If things feel off to me, I don't friend them. If weird stuff starts going on with them, I unfriend them. Doesn't mean I'm perfectly safe, but I can't hide away either. Not unless I want to quit writing. I keep a close, tight circle of online friends and I watch my back.

 

[Jason Byrne]

I have no idea why people do things like this, but it's as old as the Internet is. When I was on Classmates quite a bit in the late 1990s/early 2000s, I watched a woman get kicked off the site for abusive behavior three times in the space of a few months, and all three times she joined again - to the tune of $30 a year each time - under a slightly different name. She'd then post all over the groups, dropping hints she was the same person. She wanted to get caught. It was so freaking bizarre.

Once when I was on the Weight Watchers boards online, there was a woman who was so abusive and nasty to everyone that everyone knew who she was, even if they didn't post on the boards she usually did. She was that notorious. She'd join under fake personas - and again this costs MONEY - and "talk" to herself under the false personalities, posing as a troll who only targeted her each time. Every time she was called out on this she'd deny it, but then that particular troll would suddenly disappear, only to be replaced by a new one a few days later. They never targeted anyone but her, and the conversations were too personal, plus the writing style was so similar, that it was obvious she was posing as these other people.

More recently, another author and I were the victims of a romance author who takes making fake personas on Facebook and Goodreads to a higher level. He made them faster than we could out them, joining Facebook groups where one or both of us were admins, stirring up trouble, and then reporting our pen names as "fake." Gotta love the irony of that. LOL!!

He also would one-star all our books on Goodreads under each of the fake names. I finally emailed Goodreads, sending them links to the FOUR DOZEN PLUS names I had uncovered, advising them that there were probably more, letting them know about the same names on Facebook and what he was doing with them, and asked them to get their IT people on it and see if the names all originated from the same IP address. What a shock (NOT!) that they did, and he was banned under all his names, including his author profile. He tried for almost a year to keep making new profiles, and every time I'd find them and send the links to Goodreads they'd delete the profile.

In the middle of all that nonsense, he sent me an email from a fake account that I didn't open because my preview pane showed me the beginning of the message: "Having fun yet blocking all those accounts from your Goodreads profile?" Right. Dude thought if he'd sent it from a fake account I wouldn't know it was him? LOL!!

He also sent an email to the other author, disclosing her address and threatening to burn down her house. She's online under her real name as well, and is very open about who she is in real life, but I'm not. She filed a police report, but he lives closer to me in real life than to her, so she wasn't really worried about him following through. She merely wanted a paper trail in case he did more stuff to her.

So yeah, this happens A LOT. It's freaking crazy. I don't understand it and I never will. You can be as careful as possible online and you still might be talking to a nut job and never know it.

Yeah, it turns out a lot of people are balls-out crazy. The guy I mentioned had conversations with himself too, also had dozens of aliases. At least that was free. And threatening violence on someone personally... wow.

 

[Jason Byrne]

I'm stating the obvious here, but it pays to be cautious with what you divulge on any social media sites. Identity theft is rife, so although we all strive to be honest it's silly to give every detail of your life away. This can include seemingly innocuous trivia such as what your first school was called, as this might be the missing piece of information needed to access your bank account, as you'd chosen it as your secret question.

Two friends of mine have been the victims of major identity fraud, discovering afterwards that they'd helped the thieves by giving them the information they needed on their social media profiles. One had £38,000 stolen, after her credit and debit cards were cloned while she was on holiday - probably by waiters and shop staff. My other friend had half-a-dozen mortgage applications made in her name, all based on the comprehensive information she'd put out there on social media. Both of them have become much more circumspect in what they reveal, fibbing about their dates and place of birth for instance.

Trolling is beyond my comprehension. I helped to manage a community centre for four years, which had a free computer suite. This was a fantastic service for the town, but we got our share of freaks and weirdos. These included a man who created false profiles on dating agencies, pretending to be attractive women. He'd get lots of admirers and string them along, while being vicious in what he said about them. I couldn't work out his motivation for doing so, wondering if he yearned for a sex change! I decided that he was simply nasty, and when I caught him emailing underage teens barred him from the building, passing on my suspicions to the police. It turned out he was well known for this borderline activity, and after some pressure was put on him, he left town.

They walk among us!

(But we're all perfectly normal - right?)

I think... we actually are the normal ones.

How's that for sad.

 

[Carol Rose]

Yeah, it turns out a lot of people are balls-out crazy. The guy I mentioned had conversations with himself too, also had dozens of aliases. At least that was free. And threatening violence on someone personally... wow.

Yeah. That wasn't fun at all.

 

[KatCarwile]

Yeah, it turns out a lot of people are balls-out crazy. The guy I mentioned had conversations with himself too, also had dozens of aliases. At least that was free. And threatening violence on someone personally... wow.

Yes. Wow.