The AutoAdmit Case
If you haven’t already read about it, two Yale law students are suing AutoAdmit (”The most prestigious college discussion board in the world”) and 28 anonymous posters at the site, who according to the plaintiffs took online character assassination to a new level.
To me this case raises a few questions:
- Does any potential employer really take anything written on AutoAdmit seriously? To my admittedly antique 39 year-old brain, the thread topics alone give me the idea that I’ll have to plow through a lot of chaff to find the wheat on this site. There’s a huge amount of random lip-flapping going on, and I truly wonder about the sanity of any potential employer that would take into account comments found on AutoAdmit when vetting a potential employee.
- If the complaint is true, and the site administrators refused to take down comments that included rape threats, should they be held liable for the online defamation that supposedly took place? I understand the rationale for the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions and believe they are a valuable counterbalance to the DMCA’s reach, but should they be used to provide a near total shield for site admins?
- What kind of person delights in tormenting someone like that? I’ve always felt that when I’m communicating with someone online, it is best to imagine that they are standing in front of me and I’m speaking the words rather than typing them. This approach has saved me from more than a few flame wars. I understand that sometimes people get heated when using the faceless medium of anonymous discussion board posts. But going out of your way to savage another person to me seems astoundingly maladjusted.
Given that these days so many students lead their lives online, and the legal profession is rather tradition-bound, it seems to me students and incoming associates need to be active in educating firms about how online reputation and online social interaction really operate.
I wrote about the original AutoAdmit defamation incident, toxic disinhibition, and asymetric personal warfare in April on Tech LawForum.
Snitty wrote,
I think the larger issue (for point 1) is that the employer may not take it seriously, but god forbid your cleint looks up which associates are working on their case and google’s them. . . do you really want your client reading that about your associate, true or not?
The flip side of this, and something that was discussed extensively on TVC, is that the student who got 16 interviews, 4 call backs and no offer had the resume of someone going into academics. And sometimes offices don’t like to hire people who are going to put in 2-5 years and bolt for a law school.
Link | June 20th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Owen wrote,
I agree with your point about recruiters taking that particular site seriously - who does the research and investigations for these people anyway? It does seem, however, that the bar for which a recruiter may decide that the candidate is simply *not worth the risk* is pretty low. It seems like the best solution for these types of cases is through more direct and indirect market persuasion — similiar to the approach that ReputationDefender takes (http://www.reputationdefender.com).
Also interesting to note that ReputationDefender deserves a lot of credit for bringing this case to light and for helping open dialogs on this subject.
Note, I am affiliated with the company but the views are my own.
Link | June 21st, 2007 at 9:54 pm