Inside Opinion » Facebook

Open season on trolls

Patrick O'Callahan — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 07:01:55 +0000

Fair warning.

People who follow our blogs will note that comments must now be shifted to Facebook. Love it or loathe it, Facebook requires commenters to post actual names. We’ve already noticed a big improvement in the quality of the conversations, which is exactly what we were hoping for.

Our letters blog in particular had turned into a nest of vipers. Writers with the courage to sign their names were being spattered with noisome fluids by small souls hiding behind idiotic handles.

When you see a troll’s post, picture a 47-year-old loser living in his mother’s basement, hunching over his …

No need to force applicants to provide social media access

TNT Editorial Board — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:44:05 +0000

This editorial will appear in Friday’s print edition.

Consider this scenario: You apply for a job. Your prospective employer shows up on your doorstep and tells you the only way you’ll be considered is if you let him go through the mail that comes to your home for the next month.

That mail might include medical information, revealing facts about your private life, even personal products that come “packaged for your privacy.” But you really want that job . . .

No employer would do that, of course, but according to some job seekers, a high-tech version of that is …

Social media should be out of order in the courtroom

TNT Editorial Board — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 00:52:02 +0000

This editorial will appear in Monday’s print edition.

We can all probably agree that there are a few places where it’s inappropriate to tweet or post something to Facebook about what’s going on.

The bathroom comes immediately to mind. Talk about oversharing.

But what about the courtroom? Increasingly, cases are being affected – and verdicts overturned – because some jurors are all too eager to share their opinions through social media like Twitter and Facebook. And according to a Wall Street Journal report, attorneys are even searching social media for comments that could provide fodder for costly new trials or …

After routing SOPA, Web giants must protect creators

TNT Editorial Board — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 03:50:54 +0000

This editorial will appear in tomorrow’s print edition.

America saw political history made Wednesday. Think colonial Minutemen decimating formidable redcoats – but firing from the Web, not fences and trees.

The British army in this case was a powerful alliance of film makers, music labels, media companies and artists – creators and copyright-holders whose films, recordings, software and products have been getting plundered or counterfeited by Internet pirates.

They had the lobbyists; they had the money.

The colonials were such Internet upstarts as Google, Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia, and countless Web enterprises that depend on user uploads …

In Seattle, terror drives the First Amendment underground

Patrick O'Callahan — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 02:46:38 +0000

This editorial will appear in tomorrow’s print edition.

Terrorist intimidation has just cost a Seattle cartoonist her freedom. Her crime: exercising her First Amendment rights.

That’s Seattle, as in the United States. There doesn’t seem to be a Seattle in Yemen.

Molly Norris, whose work appears in the Seattle Weekly, gained international attention last spring after she drew a mock promotion of an imaginary event, “Everbody Draw Mohammed Day.” The spoof poster, published on Facebook, depicted various inanimate objects – including a coffee cup and a domino – each claiming to be the true likeness of the founder of …