Cyberbullying - The Dark Side of Web 2.0
by Michael HoffmanFriday, March 30th, 2007
One of the things all this user-generated-content of blogs and personalized pages has opened up is the development of something called cyberbullying. This is the phenomenon of publishing negative comments about someone that go beyond criticism and into the world of threats. It is the playground bully writ large.
The web allows for a lot of anonymous communications, which is the first factor. When people can hide they often do things they otherwise couldn’t get away with. When you combine anonymity with the ease of publishing you get the cyberbullies coming out of the woodwork.
Today has been designated “Stop Cyberbullying Day” and so this is my excuse to tell you about the problem. The issue has been around for a while — particularly among high school students with MySpace pages — but it has recently come out strong because of outrageous online death threats to a prominent blogger. (The previous link is to the story of how Kathy Sierra has been under threat and it is very disturbing, so be advised.)
If you want to know about this issue and what is being done about it, check out Cyberbully.org
