- From: Moses Ma <moses.ma@futurelabconsulting.com>
- Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2018 15:26:56 -0700
- To: "public-credentials@w3.org" <public-credentials@w3.org>
- Message-ID: <b5c3ad73-2230-4576-7266-cf76a5ec3a20@futurelabconsulting.com>
Hi everyone,
This is an unbelievable nightmare of a story about the damage people can
do on the web without trustable identity:
https://gizmodo.com/when-a-stranger-decides-to-destroy-your-life-1827546385
It might be useful to create a use case for how the problem of "a
disgruntled stranger destroying your life by terrorizing you online"
could be addressed by using DID and verifiable claims.
Moses
Here's the text of the article:
Monika Glennon has lived in Huntsville, Alabama, for the last 12
years. Other than a strong Polish accent, she fits a certain
stereotype of the All-American life. She’s blonde. Her husband is a
veteran Marine. Her two children, a boy and a girl, joined the
military as adults. She sells houses—she’s a real estate agent at
Re/Max—helping others realize their own American dream.
But in September 2015, she was suddenly plunged into an American
nightmare. She got a call at 6 a.m. one morning from a colleague at
Re/Max telling her something terrible had been posted about her on
the Re/Max Facebook page. Glennon thought at first she meant that a
client had left her a bad review, but it turned out to be much worse
than that.
It was a link to a story about Glennon on She’s A Homewrecker, a
site that exists for the sole purpose of shaming the alleged “other
woman.” The author of the Homewrecker post claimed that she and her
husband had used Glennon as their realtor and that everything was
going great until one evening when she walked in on Glennon having
sex with her husband on the floor of a home the couple had been
scheduled to see. The unnamed woman went into graphic detail about
the sex act and claimed she’d taken photos that she used to get
everything from her husband in a divorce. The only photo she posted
though was Glennon’s professional headshot, taken from her bio page
on Re/Max’s site.
Glennon was horrified. The story was completely fabricated and she
had no idea why someone would have written it. Someone on Facebook
named Ryan Baxter had posted it to the Re/Max page; Baxter also went
through Glennon’s Facebook friend list and sent it to her husband,
family members, and many of her professional contacts.
“Sorry to be the one to let you in on this,” Baxter wrote to
Glennon’s husband, Scott, in a Facebook message.
Glennon waded into the comment section on the Homewrecker story and
wrote that it was completely fabricated. A woman named Amy responded
skeptically, “Hmmm, so why would someone make up such an extravagant
story?”
The story was re-posted on other sites, including one called
BadBizReport.is where it has been viewed over 95,000 times. It
quickly became the top search result for Glennon’s name on Google.
Within a year, Glennon was experiencing the repercussions: Her
number of listings dropped by half. She estimates that she’s lost
$200,000 in business since 2015.
She was mystified as to the post’s author. She thought it could be a
rival realtor, or an acquaintance who was angry at her.
“I was looking at every person in my life and every stranger and
wondering who did it to me and why,” Glennon told me by phone. “It
makes you rethink every relationship in your life.”
Eventually, after $100,000 in attorney’s bills, Glennon was able to
unmask the culprit. It turned out to be a complete stranger who had
been offended by a comment Glennon had made about a news article on
Facebook.
In 2014, a teenager from Alabama visited Auschwitz and tweeted a
smiling selfie from the former concentration camp. It went viral, as
people across the internet debated the teen’s choice of
self-portraiture. WHNT News, a Huntsville, Alabama-based TV station,
posted a story about the incident to its Facebook page asking
readers to “share your thoughts.”
A heated discussion ensued. Monika Glennon was among those defending
the teen, saying that kids make mistakes, that at least she was
visiting the site, and that the condemnation by an internet mob
“shows the same judgmental and senseless pack mentality that led to
this horrific time in history to begin with.”
A woman named Mollie Rosenblum disagreed. She responded to several
of the teen selfie supporters, including Glennon, saying that
Auschwitz was a somber place for reflection and not an appropriate
place to take selfies. She identified herself as being of Jewish
descent and suggested that others didn’t have a full grasp of the
Holocaust. Glennon responded to Rosenblum, telling her Auschwitz
isn’t “her” place, that it “belongs to all and was a former killing
zone of all,” including, originally, Polish people.
If you’ve ever argued with someone online, you’re probably not
surprised to hear that neither person was convinced by the other
person’s arguments.
If you’ve ever argued with someone online, you’re probably not
surprised to hear that neither person was convinced by the other
person’s arguments. Glennon forgot about the exchange and went about
her life. Rosenblum did not.
Rosenblum stewed over the exchange for a week. It was a low point in
her life; a single mother with two sons, she was, by her own account
as posted on Facebook, then “in the throws of full blown
methamphetamine addiction” and making very poor decisions
(including, in 2016, kidnapping). She spent a few hours researching
Glennon online and soon knew enough to fake having met her in real
life. It was the online version of road rage; instead of pulling a
gun on another driver, Rosenblum decided to drop a bomb on Glennon’s
reputation. Rosenblum submitted her fabricated story to She’s A
Homewrecker, and then, according to an account she later gave to a
local news outlet, forgot about it.
There is a constellation of sites on the internet that exist solely
as places for people to exorcise their demons, and more importantly,
their grudges; She’s A Homewrecker is one of them. It offers the
opportunity to publicize a person’s misdeeds so that they are
available not just to an inner circle with access to relevant gossip
but to anyone who Googles that person’s name. The terms of service
specify that posts must be factually true, but if they’re not, it’s
not a problem for the site. It’s protected by Section 230 of the
Communications Decency Act, which protects websites from being sued
for the things their users say.
Rosenblum wrote and submitted the story in August 2014, but it
wasn’t published until September 2015, long after Rosenblum had
forgotten about it. That’s because submissions to She’s a
Homewrecker are reviewed before publication. Asked about the reason
for the delay, the site’s lawyer David Gingras speculates that
Rosenblum’s story may have “sat in a holding pen for a year.” The
trigger for publication was likely the sale of the site. She’s a
Homewrecker was started in 2013 by Arielle Alexander, but she sold
it in August 2015 to Relic Agency, which is run by Nik Richie, who
also founded The Dirty, another important star in the constellation
of grudge-settling sites. The story about Glennon went up a month
after the site changed ownership.
It may have languished in obscurity there if not for a person who
went by Ryan Baxter on Facebook. Baxter was the one who posted the
story to Re/Max’s Facebook page, emailed it to Glennon’s bosses, and
sent it to many of her Facebook contacts. Apparently a regular
reader of She’s A Homewrecker, Baxter had a habit of compounding the
damage to people shamed on the site. Glennon found numerous
instances of Baxter posting She’s a Homewrecker posts to the
Facebook walls of other people’s employers and friends. Such are the
strange hobbies of the modern age.
Glennon wrote repeatedly to all the sites that had posted the story
telling them it was false but none of them would take it down. Her
only option was to go to court, so she filed a lawsuit in 2016
against John Does, alleging libel and copyright infringement,
because the post used her professional headshot, which she had
ownership of.
Through the suit, Glennon was able to subpoena She’s A Homewrecker
and Facebook for IP addresses, as well as Internet Service Providers
to find out the identities of the people behind the IP addresses. A
couple of months after she filed the suit, yet another post appeared
on yet another site, “Report My Ex,” written by a man claiming to be
the husband who had cheated with Glennon, again luridly detailing a
sex act that never happened.
“That really scared me because I was afraid men would book me as a
realtor expecting me to have sex with them,” Glennon told me by
phone. “So I had my husband start coming with me to bookings at
vacant homes. We installed a surveillance system in our house
because I was so scared.”
Through the subpoenas, Glennon discovered that Ryan Baxter was a
stranger in Oxnard, California, named Hannah Lupian. Shortly after
Lupian was served with a legal complaint, the Ryan Baxter profile
disappeared from Facebook. Glennon has never heard from Lupian, and
I was unable to get in touch with her.
Rosenblum was another matter. After becoming aware that her identity
would be revealed by her ISP, Mollie Rosenblum doubled down. She
emailed Glennon’s attorneys, apologizing but saying that if Glennon
continued to pursue her legally, she would “protect [herself] by
making their initial contact public.” Six months later, in September
2017, Rosenblum acted on her threat and took to Facebook and the
comment section of the BadBizReport, where she apologized for lying
about Glennon being an adulterer but said she did it because of
Glennon’s “veiled antisemitism.”
“While Mrs. Glennon is not an adulterous woman to my knowledge, she
is guilty IN MY OPINION, of facebook trolling the wrong person,”
concluded Rosenblum on Facebook.
“She is guilty, in my opinion, of Facebook trolling the wrong person.”
Glennon was horrified. She didn’t want more terrible things written
about her online.
“I’m not a Nazi sympathizer. I grew up in a poor family in communist
Poland,” Glennon said. “I saw the comments and reached out to
[Rosenblum] over Facebook Messenger and said, ‘This has reached an
awful level of damage that you have done to me. Let’s meet. Please
ask me what you want to ask me.’”
They agreed to meet at a restaurant in Athens, Alabama, a town an
hour from Glennon’s, where Rosenblum lives. The meeting lasted four
hours.
“She had thought I was this mean, rich bitch. That’s the problem
with social media. You just make these assumptions about people,”
Glennon said. “After meeting me, she did an affidavit admitting
everything she did. She understood who I was then.”
Rosenblum did not respond to media inquiries via email or Facebook
Messenger. She appears active on Facebook as recently as July 4, but
she has been sentenced to four years for kidnapping and the Alabama
Department of Corrections website says she started her term in
November 2017. Her thinking, however, is well-documented online and
in court documents.
Meeting Glennon in person seemed to defuse Rosenblum’s anger. She
returned once again to the comment section of the BadBizReport to
retract what she had said and apologize.
“Mrs. Glennon is in fact a kind and compassionate person with whom I
share many common values,” wrote Rosenblum. “Please accept my
deepest regret for the harm I have brought to the lives of her and
those whom love her.”
Rosenblum wanted to take the posts down but she couldn’t. On
submission sites like She’s A Homewrecker, there is no delete
button, not to mention the copies of the post that appeared on other
sites.
“These sites should allow original posters to take these posts
down,” said Glennon. “I see a lot of people in comments saying they
regret it and want to take it down but they can’t.”
She’s a Homewrecker lawyer David Gingras scoffed at that. “The fact
that authors can’t remove their own posts is intended to reduce the
effectiveness of threats such as: ‘Take this down or I’ll sue your
ass into bankruptcy,’” said Gingras by email. “Although the site’s
policy is not to allow authors to remove their own posts as a matter
of course, the site will still consider removal requests from an
author on a case-by-case basis....it really just depends on the
circumstances. The site will also usually remove content that a
court has found to be false.”
Glennon won her lawsuit against Rosenblum and Lupian, with a federal
court in northern Alabama finding in her favor on claims of
copyright violation, invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of
emotional distress, and interference with her business. The judge
ordered websites that published Rosenblum’s story to remove it.
She’s A Homewrecker has already taken down the post, but it remains
up on BadBizReport. BadBizReport’s website states that it doesn’t
respond to court orders and that “there’s no way in hell to get off
of BadBizReport once you’re listed on it,” adding “American lawyers
make us laugh.”
Luckily, the judge also ordered search engines, “such as Google,” to
de-index all versions of the post “to ensure that it does not appear
as a search result when Ms. Glennon’s name is searched.” In Europe,
the right to remove irrelevant or false information from your search
results is enshrined in the law as “the right to be forgotten.” In
the U.S., you have to pay for it.
“You should be able to remove untrue stories without spending
$100,000,” said Glennon. “For a person making minimum wage trying to
clear their reputation, it would be impossible.”
There is a question as to whether Google and others will comply with
the order.
“Google typically complies with court-ordered removals in the U.S.
However, in 2017, Google allegedly raised its standards on honoring
court-ordered removals before relaxing some,” said Eric Goldman, a
law professor at Santa Clara University. “Unfortunately,
court-ordered removals can be obtained for illegitimate reasons in a
variety of ways. Thus, I think Google should evaluate court-ordered
removals carefully instead of honoring them reflexively.”
For example, reputation management firms have gotten courts to order
that posts be taken down and removed from search results by suing
people who don’t actually exist and then getting judgments by
default against them. Goldman added that he thought Glennon’s
removal request was a legitimate one, given that Rosenblum also
wants the post removed.
“It would make sense for Google to honor this particular injunction,
though it likely would require some research by Google before they
can confirm its legitimacy—research that Google really prefers not
to do,” said Goldman by email. A Google spokesperson said the
company reviews all court orders requesting links be removed from
search and prefers when parties resolve among themselves in court
whether a page should be removed from search results. Last year,
Google removed links from search in the U.S. because of defamation
over 30,000 times.
The judge hasn’t decided yet what damages will be awarded to
Glennon. Neither Rosenblum nor Lupian appear to have ample assets,
so she likely won’t recover much of what she’s spent on the lawsuit.
Glennon says the experience has left her more cautious online. She
locked down her Facebook account so that strangers have less access
to her information and, importantly, can’t see her friends list.
Surprisingly, she still comments on news articles.
“But nothing too provocative,” she told me.
--
*Moses Ma | Managing Partner*
moses.ma@futurelabconsulting.com | moses.ma@sparkchaincapital.com |
moses@ngenven.com
v+1.415.568.1068 | skype mosesma | /linktr.ee/moses.tao/
<http://linktr.ee/moses.tao>
FutureLab provides strategy, ideation and technology for breakthrough
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earn more at www.futurelabconsulting.com.
Or whet your appetite by reading /Agile Innovation/
<http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Innovation-Revolutionary-Accelerate-Engagement/dp/B00SSRSZ9A>
and /Blockchain Design Sprint/
<https://www.amazon.com/Blockchain-Design-Sprint-Workbook-Implement/dp/1548592714>.
Received on Wednesday, 1 August 2018 22:27:25 UTC