
What’s Facebook’s responsibility when the nation seeks to lynch someone? - muratmutlu
http://pandodaily.com/2012/12/14/whats-facebooks-responsibility-when-the-nation-seeks-to-lynch-someone-on-only-a-name/
======
jrwoodruff
The responsibility is not Facebook's, but rather the news organizations that
reported early rumors and reports as facts. IANAL, but i would expect that
they potentially face libel suits for defamation of character.

In this situation, Facebook is merely a modern day phone book (albeit vastly
more robust and complex). It is the news organization that bears the
responsibility of gathering, checking and publishing verified facts. That's
called reporting.

~~~
megablast
How could facebook respond to this anyway? Do they scour all news for
incorrectly attributed stories with facebook links? That would be impossible.

~~~
astrodust
If only there was some kind of social platform where Facebook employees could
share information like this and it would end up being forwarded to the
appropriate people...

------
koudelka
Hi all,

Ryan's roommate here, longtime HN lurker.

It would have been nice if FB locked down his profile a little sooner, for
sure. I imagine we're going to be dealing with this shit for a while to come
now.

If you wouldn't mind, can you help us get the hashtag #ApologizeToRyan off the
ground? Maybe social media can be used to restore his good name, too.

~~~
cynicalkane
I mean well when I say this but I think it needs to be said. My Bayesian
probability sense is tingling. HN is comparatively small compared to the space
of people-who-could-be-Ryan's-roommate.

~~~
koudelka
Well, there's probably nothing sensible that I could do to prove who I am. I
promise that making the hashtag trend wont blow up the world.

~~~
gregsq
And there's something of an irony.

I'm glad to see that rational distinction prevails in this smaller forum. It's
difficult to derive an as useful moderator as yours is here to the much larger
colosseum of Facebook.

Anyone can be a deputy on Facebook. If it was the physical world and someone
put up a notice in a meeting place inviting a hundred people to come and trash
a citizens home, or where a lynch mob gathered under that roof to engage in
hysterical damaging acts against a citizen protected ordinarily by law, we
would not say that the owner of the meeting place did not at least have a duty
of care.

It would be an impossible contradiction to require the venue owner to install
fire exit signs to protect an individual and yet allow no interference if the
individual is set alight inside the building instead.

Maybe Facebook is a bit like a nightclub. Go and have a good time and no one
should get in your face while you're partying. Just don't expect that you
won't get in a bar fight once in a while. And if it gets too messy, management
will throw you out.

------
danielweber
Internet Lynch Mobs: JUST SAY NO

Sorry to be simplistic, but that rule is the best. If you think you need to
pile on someone, don't.

Our primal lizard brains just _love_ to stomp the shit out of someone, so when
society gives us signals that it's okay, we love to do it. We must resist this
urge before Piggy's head get crushed by a boulder.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Here's an interesting article about recent actual lynchings in Nigeria, pretty
frightening stuff:
[http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/per...](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/perplexed-
perplexed-on-mob-justice-in-nigeria/264006/)

Sometimes it can be frustrating to operate within the rule of law, but the
alternatives are pretty scary.

------
citricsquid
Every time something like this happens people react in quite predictable ways,
the creation of Facebook pages is one of the more common ones. Why do people
do this? Does it come from social pressure to show just how angry they are
with actions, is it just how people cope with terrible news (by _doing_
something even if it's ultimately futile) or is it just another case of humans
doing irrational things? My google-fu isn't very good so no results of
relevance are coming up, but it seems like there must be a reason behind these
reactions.

~~~
dkarl
I can't offer a psychological explanation, but my impression from the people I
know who are the most eager to offer their opinion on the shooter is that they
love it, that this is the coolest thing that happened to them this month.
They'd be bored without it (or they'd be stirring up drama with their friends
or co-workers.) They say they're angry, but they seem more excited and
gleeful. Some people love tracking hurricanes, some people love elections, and
some people love tragedies. It's a break from their boring lives, a dramatic
and important occasion to share some excitement with millions of other people.
Like when Princess Diana died -- suddenly a lot of people realized that she
was really, really, really important to them. (Not that she wasn't important
to a lot of people, but there were also plenty of people who were determined
not to get left out of the excitement even though they only had a vague idea
who she was.) With Princess Diana it was grief, and with Ryan/Adam Lanza it's
righteous anger. People are just enjoying the hell out of it.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Sure, it's something to get whipped up into a frenzy about. There's a reason
we all know about pitchforks and yet few of us would know how to use them for
their proper purpose. I think there are several things at play here, one is
this kind of "entertainment" that you describe. The other is arm-chair
psychology many of us engage in about what this shooter was like, even before
there was any stable information out there. It's mostly just ignorance.

------
melvinmt
This is why Dutch publishers are prohibited to publish last names of suspects
(even after conviction). In this case it would be abbreviated to "Adam L.".
They even protect the identities of the most notorious killers and terrorists
(Volkert van der G., Karst T., Samir A.). The US should do the same, solves a
lot of problems outlined in this article.

~~~
benesch
You'd run into quite a bit of trouble with the first amendment and freedom of
the press.

~~~
vacri
Ironically, RSF places the Netherlands in #3 place of the Press Freedom Index,
and the US comes in at #47.

<http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2011-2012,1043.html>

~~~
benesch
The US's fall from #20 is largely a result of arrests of reporters attempting
to document the Occupy movement.

While freedom of the press in the US may be violated pragmatically, you'd have
a much harder time challenging it philosophically. That is, police offers
arresting individual reporters (especially ones involved in protest) slips by
relatively easily, but a federal law placing limits on what information the
press can publish would receive strong opposition.

~~~
bluedanieru
So... what? It would be hard for authorities in the US to pass a law
restricting speech, so instead they just restrict speech without going through
the bother of making a law about it? How is that better?

~~~
benesch
It's better than restricting speech through law AND enforcement. I'm not
supporting the current state of affairs; not at all. Just pointing out that
you'd have trouble pushing such a (legal) restriction on the US press.

~~~
bluedanieru
>It's better than restricting speech through law AND enforcement.

Are you sure about that? If a government passes a law restricting speech
because it has to, and then enforces it to restrict speech, it isn't clear to
me that's worse than a government which doesn't bother with laws in the first
place. Either way, you have no freedom of speech, but at least with the former
you still have some semblance of rule of law. That's more important than
speech, IMO (although of course without both you're already pretty fucked).

------
dkokelley
I wonder what (if any) legal recourse Ryan Lanza might have against the news
agencies that libeled his name. I imagine it really depends on the exact
wording used, but Ryan could have a great defamation/emotional distress case
on his hands, when everything settles.

~~~
brianchu
In the US it is very hard to win a libel case (as the plaintiff). Basically,
you have to prove that the news agencies _intentionally and maliciously_
libeled you. This is pretty darn near impossible to prove in most cases. If I
recall correctly, an example of a case where a libel lawsuit would be
successful is one where the new agency makes up something or encourages a
source to make up something.

EDITS (replies to below):

Defamation laws in the US are actually very complex and in certain cases
ambiguous. Different states have different standards for civil liability. In
Gertz v. Robert Welch
(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertz_v._Robert_Welch,_Inc.>), which involved
a newspaper publishing lies about a non-public official, the Supreme Court
held that state defamation laws had to have the plaintiff prove at the very
least fault of some kind on the defendant's part, and that for punitive
damages malice must be proved. The court also found that people cannot be made
into a public official.

Certain statements are considered to be inherently damaging and fault does not
need to be proved.

Regardless, clearly Ryan Lanza does not have a case since law enforcement
officials _did_ originally identify him, wrongly, as the suspect. The police
were clearly not negligent because the reason they ID'd him as the gunman was
because his ID was found on the gunman's body. I don't know if the news
actually stated as a fact that he was guilty.

~~~
DannyBee
This is not true. The standard of actual malice applies only to public
figures.

------
smsm42
This is not Facebook's responsibility. This is everybody's responsibility not
to be an idiot. Unfortunately, too many people fail at this responsibility.
But enabling them by saying "it's the press" or "it's the Facebook", not "it
is you - personally you - being an idiot by believing unchecked information"
is not helping either. When "the nation" - or, more precisely, a bunch of very
foolish people - seek to lynch someone, they should be told "you are fools.
Not go home and think about it", not "is Facebook to blame for it? Is Reuters?
Can we find anybody - preferably big faceless corporation - to take the
blame?"

------
msabalau
Maybe the edge case of being misidentified as your brother, the mass murderer,
is not one that Facebook needs to spend any time solving.

And perhaps, despite some of the comments in this thread, strong traditions
and protections for free speech are broadly valuable, and it wouldn't make
sense for there to be litigious or legislative remedies that weaken them.

And if we're going to waste time worrying about people expressing their "hate"
on Facebook, perhaps we could also solve the problem of pandodaily linkbaiting
a "tech" article out of a national tragedy involving the slaughter of
children.

~~~
bilbo0s
No one is seeking to take away freedom of speech. Only to protect the rights
of the accused.

For a more complete elaboration of the difference...

please refer to "To Kill a Mockingbird". A book you can find on Amazon. The
author is Harper Lee.

------
bcoates
If these social networks wished to discourage such behavior, they could create
a "most popular comment" feature that pinned something you said publicly and
in the last few months in your public profile, then quietly tweak their
algorithms to prefer public lynch-mob dickishness or other bad behavior to
this spot.

~~~
uvdiv
That's a terrifying thought, that centrally-run social networks are _actually_
in a position to perform this kind of conditioning. What could Facebook do, if
it tried to socially engineer the entire world?

------
JshWright
"...should Facebook be more proactive in removing (at least provisionally)
hate groups like the ones listed above? Okay, before you start crying foul
about free speech and the 1st amendment..."

Is there some Facebook Constitution I'm not aware of? What duty does Facebook
have to uphold the first amendment?

------
Jagat
Seems Adam Lanza, Ryan Lanza's brother is the suspect and that his mom, a
teacher was killed in the shootout as well. [http://gawker.com/5968551/ryan-
lanza-is-a-cold-blooded-murde...](http://gawker.com/5968551/ryan-lanza-is-a-
cold-blooded-murderer?post=55248896)

------
uiri
>(Gawker also changed its story, but proof of the original headline is still
in the URL)

You can put anything in the URL you like, as long as the number matches and it
passes whatever regular expression gawker runs on those URLs, it will point to
the right news story. Hardly conclusive proof that gawker changed the headline
when someone can do something like [http://gawker.com/5968551/ryan-lanza-is-a-
cold-blooded-murde...](http://gawker.com/5968551/ryan-lanza-is-a-cold-blooded-
murderer) and the URL bar doesn't even change to reflect the original title.

~~~
philmcc
Well, I think the idea is that the link Gawker released initially was the one
that got passed around the most and posted on facebook page, twitter, etc. ( I
know I posted it. )

As a result, I believe that would also be the URL that ranks highest in a
Google search.

Regardless of what text gets added after the number so to an extent, for
popular posts, whichever title Gawker releases first will be set in stone.

I'm not very familiar with regexes so I don't really understand why they would
need one on the URL. It seems you can drop the string part of that "suffix"
altogether.

~~~
ReidZB
Purely SEO. Articles being identified by number is much cleaner programming-
wise, but search engines like it when URLs have text in them to index against.
It's also good for readability of URLs in general, really.

------
kmfrk
Facebook have a responsibility, insofar as privacy is concerned: users are now
forced to be included in searches; how easy is it to make your posts saying
your are not the killer; how easy is it to delete your Facebook profile, as
the wrongly accused brother eventually did?

What's more important is that other people like the Ryan Lanza namesakes are
affected by this erosion of privacy - people who also face threats and the
like.

It doesn't make them culpable, but they should know that they have a
responsibility, because when people are on the look-out for someone, they are
going to choose the path of least resistance to tracking them down.

For what it's worth, how should Twitter go about it, when a Ryan Lanza
receives death threats from people on Twitter? What can be really complicated
is figuring out how to deal with the problem; what isn't is understanding that
the proprietors of the most popular social media platforms have a
responsibility to their users.

------
rmc
I think it's examples like this that show the extreme interpretation of the US
free speech law. The US doesn't protect all speech and allows some things to
be banned. Cases like this should fall under nonprotected speech. The harm
that can done time innocent person without any due process of a fair legal
trial and with no effective ability to argue your case _far_ outweighs the
harm to a newspaper in banning them mentioning the name. You should be allowed
report all the rest of the details of this horrific crime, of course, but you
should not be legally allowed to identify the accused unless it was very much
in the public interest (e.g. if it was a politician who did it).

------
stickhandle
Sloppy journalism, for sure ... but libel? Maybe. If so, by carrying his
brother's id, the shooter may have left him a parting gift of financial
security. Surely not planned ... (?)

------
mayneack
This page has some serious issues with it's floating header in Chromium on
Xubuntu 12.04 <http://i.imgur.com/5Z3H6.png>

------
antihero
They could display a warning on every goddamn person's Facebook going "No, the
Adam/Ryan Lanza here is NOT the killer on the news, please leave them alone."

------
Alex3917
If you buy the argument that the Internet would be better off if everyone had
their own domain names (as was recently discussed on HN), it doesn't make much
sense to then take Facebook to task for not getting involved.

------
lifeisstillgood
This is about the existence of _institutions of government_

We learnt a long time ago that two sides who cannot trust each other _must_
have a third party whom they can trust to behave in a particular (fair) way
all the time.

That third party becomes a mechanism for government.

Facebook cannot be trusted because Facebook has no controlling mind. Just like
HN here.

Institutions cannot be crowd sourced or socially generated. They must be based
on principles and be independent and incorruptible.

We give professors and judges _lifetime contracts_ with no get out clauses -
and we do it for a reason. When Facebook is public ally funded we will need it
to have a controlling mind

------
tbirdz
And this yet another reason I don't have a facebook. Although, it seems the
news media seems to think anyone without facebook is a psychopath as well.
Lose, lose.

------
Tichy
I think Ryan should receive a lot of money from the media. Can the media
really just ruin somebody's life and not even pay a dime for it?

~~~
kevingadd
The answer is yes. They can. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20267989>

