I was petrified. They had my address. I reported it to the authorities and hoped for the best. Two days later I opened my front door and there was a bunch of dead flowers with my wife's old Twitter username on it. Meeting A Troll.
posted by Foci for Analysis on Sep 24, 2012 - 131 comments

Republican-sponsored New York State Assembly bill would ban anonymous online speech. "AN ACT to amend the civil rights law, in relation to protecting a person's right to know who is behind an anonymous internet posting..." S6779, introduced by Rep. O'Meara, is brief: it establishes "a person's right to know who is behind an anonymous internet posting" as a civil right, and requires that NY-based "Web site administrator[s]" remove any anonymous postings. The summary of the Assembly bill, A8688, whose text is identical, describes the bill as "a means for the victim of an anonymous posting on a website to request that such post be removed, unless the anonymous poster is willing to attach his or her name to it." [more inside]
posted by chesty_a_arthur on May 25, 2012 - 90 comments

I Won't Photograph Ugly People. A young photographer, building her business in Pennsylvania, does a little FB research on the high school kids she's been commissioned to photograph for their senior portraits. She makes a tough decision: she won't photograph the ugly ones..
posted by thinkpiece on Aug 20, 2011 - 211 comments

The Persecution of Daniel Lee: Korean rapper was a victim of an online smear campaign that said he didn't go to Stanford. But it gets worse... [more inside]
posted by k8t on Jul 22, 2011 - 53 comments

9 Teenagers Charged After Classmate's Suicide. In April 2009, an 11 year old in Springfield, MA killed himself after enduring relentless anti-gay bullying. In January of this year, Phoebe Prince--a recent immigrant from rural Ireland to South Hadley, MA--killed herself after months of harassment from her high school classmates. And now, 10 days after the Massachusetts House of Representatives unanimously passed an anti-bullying bill, 9 teenagers have been charged in Prince's death.
posted by availablelight on Mar 30, 2010 - 181 comments

"We call it cyber-bullying and we don't have a law to address it." In the matter of the United States v. Drew (pdf), the misdemeanor charges against Lori Drew have been overturned. Judge George Wu noted that violations of the Terms and Services of a website cannot be considered a crime. A Congresswoman has drafted a bill (pdf) to fill in the gaps, allowing for future cyber-bullying convictions. Previously: (1, 2, 3, 4) [more inside]
posted by jabberjaw on Jul 3, 2009 - 55 comments

Top Six Ways To Kill Piper. Apparently unaware of how controversial and high-profile cyber-bullying has become, the possibility of consequences, regardless of age, and a strong local preference against lists of arbitrary length, middle school girls make instructional video about how to kill classmate. No charges are filed. (via Huffington Post)
posted by ActingTheGoat on May 25, 2009 - 60 comments

Jumping on the infamous Interschool Ho voting booth story Salon is currently running a 4 page article charting/attacking the rise of 'cyber-bullying', a phenomena defined by students (mostly?) slandered their peers online. In the opening page of the piece the author, all orifices throthing, offers several graphic examples of the trend and gives not only details of the full name and school of a female sophomore victim, an extensive barrage of quotes of what ugly, retarded, hurtful stuff was written about her by some severely mentally unstable individual, but also a relatively prominent, in-your-face link to the smalltime message board in question causing them to replace it with the whimpering redirect message 'Unfortunately, due to an article posted on salon.com, the LHStudents.com website traffic has exceeded maximum capacity and we have no other option but to create a new LHBoard on a different server'..
posted by Kino on Jul 9, 2001 - 16 comments