"University of Maryland law professor Danielle Citron, who last year published a book called Hate Crimes in Cyberspace, says that when attacks on someone escalate and turn personal, they can turn into a harassment campaign. People feel shielded by their sense of anonymity and egged on to post more vitriolic messages by seeing that others agree with them, she writes in her book. And as more people pile on, the likelihood grows that they'll hit unintended targets. The consequences of an online harassment campaign can be considerable because "a Google search or a Bing search is a CV," she says. While they can be far worse for the real targets than the accidental ones, employers may dismiss a candidate being trash-talked on message boards, headhunters may decide not to call, and it may not matter whether the victim is the right person (or indeed, whether the "right person" even deserves these attacks in the first place).
The notion that people would hurl the worst kinds of invectives without doing a cursory investigation to see who's on the other end is jarring. But Citron says people may not bother figuring out if they're targeting the right person because there are negligible consequences to being wrong. Some people go silent, some apologize, and some appear to simply delete their tweets."
- Date Published:10/27/2015
- Original Publication:Cosmopolitan