I look after the page about Alexander Hamilton. I think it's a fabulous encyclopedia entry. You can learn much more about Hamilton's life on that page than on any other encyclopedia entry. But there are lots of stories where people have introduced lots of false information through Wikipedia and it remains there.
So I think that the skill of figuring out which Wikipedia entry is more or less credible and figuring out how to use the History tab in Wikipedia. How do you look at the discussions that have played out there? How do you figure out about who the sources are who have written things? I think that could be a great syllabus in and of itself.
DP: So many of the things that are wrong with the Internet have to do with anonymity. What would be wrong with everyone being attached to their own names everywhere they go on the Internet?
JP: I think it'd be great if more people were more accountable about how their lead their lives online. And if people, in fact, used their real names more frequently.
Facebook has an advantage, for instance, over some other social networks because people tend more likely to be themselves. But the fear around anonymity is that there are places in the world where it's very important. People are able to be anonymous and to say things about their government, for instance, without the likelihood that they're going to be put in jail the next day. But I think in everyday life, for kids dealing with one another, or grownups dealing with one another, or corporations dealing with one another, we should be much more accountable and we should use our real names.
DP: Can you tell me what cyberbullying is and give me an example of it?
JP: Cyberbullying is when kids treat one another awfully online, when they hurt one another psychologically. So an example might be going onto Facebook and saying something cruel about one of your peers on their Web pages, their Facebook page. It might be going on MySpace and posting something there. It might be spreading something on a service like Twitter. It's the act of bullying, only doing it online.
DP: Is the host of the service at all responsible? Does Facebook have any responsibility to take off hate speech?
JP: The host is not liable at all. This is part of federal law and it lets off the hook anyone who is a mere conduit of this information. And this is one of the big debates in the law. Is a site like Craigslist, for instance, responsible for things that are posted on Craigslist? And the basic answer is no.
DP: So this has been tested in court?
JP: It's been tested hundreds of times in court. It's the Communications Decency Act, section 230. And it's been held up consistently.
DP: Is cyberbullying part of Internet rumors?
JP: Very much part of it. If we look at what are the harms that are happening to kids online, the most common harm is psychological harm.
Sometimes it's a rumor that happens to be true, and those are often the ones that hurt the most. So it's not only that people are starting false rumors, but it's the extent to which young people are playing out their relationships online—sometimes relationships that probably should have been kept offline.
DP: How widespread is this?
JP: Extraordinarily widespread. So if you were to ask young people about the most likely harm that they're going to have experienced, it's almost invariably bullying online that they tell you.
DP: Is there anything to be done? I mean, my kids get told, "Don't cyberbully," but does it do any good?
JP: It's awfully hard. I think your note about wanting kids to be more accountable for who they are, not to hide behind anonymity when they're dealing with one another, is very important. But we should not pass a law against cyberbullying.
DP: We shouldn't?
JP: No. No.
DP: Why not?
JP: Well, there's a bill pending before Congress, the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Act, which would criminalize the amount of human-to-human interaction on the Web. I think we don't want to fill our jails with teenagers who are trying to figure out how to deal with one another.
DP: Have you ever been the victim of a blog attack or a rumor?
JP: Nothing too nasty. But everyone will start now that I'm doing this. (LAUGHS)