Bloggers unite against abuse online
March 27th, 2007 by Lloyd Gofton
There has been uproar in the blogosphere this week following a series of death threats aimed at Kathy Sierra, author of Creating Passionate Users.
As a result, Kathy has decided to cancel a public appearance and suspend her blog, after revealing she has been the subject of a four week campaign of abuse, which the police are investigating. Kathy has overviewed her ordeal in a post.
There has been a great deal of support from bloggers, including the likes of Steve Rubel and Robert Scoble who has also suspended his own blog to highlight the issue. The story also went up on the BBC earlier today.
Unfortunately there has been an undercurrent of abuse in the blogosphere for sometime, but this horrible experience has forced action. It’s refreshing to see bloggers unite against those that are misusing the freedoms of social media to hurl abuse behind a wall of anonymity.
More control is the obvious solution, but that removes the very essence of what bloggers like Kathy Sierra are trying to do.
Sam Sethi at Vecosys has said he will be working on a bloggers code of conduct, and it appears the resolution of this issue will be the subject of much debate.
March 31st, 2007 at 3:06 pm
What on earth would a code of conduct change about the behaviour of the people who have been victimising Kathy Sierra? People who wouldn’t do that sort of thing would sign up for a code, those who wouldn’t wouldn’t.