Home › Blogs › David's blog

Weasel in St. Louis

Thu, 11/19/2009 - 11:00 — David

I'm not sure why I'm so angry about this, but I am (maybe it's because I had just read another story about mistreatment of blog comments).

The director of social media for the Post-Dispatch (not some kid, either--he says he's been a journalist since 1982) used the IP address of a comment poster to notify his employer (a school), costing the person his (or her) job. The initial story is here, and his even more infuriating follow up is here.

This expert in social media claims that he didn't violate the site's privacy policy because he didn't tell anything private, and from him "the school learned three things: 1) That the comments were posted; 2) When the comments were posted; 3) That I knew they came from the school based on the DNS information that accompanied the IP address. The school knows its own IP address. Knowing when the comments were posted allowed them to track them to a specific work station through its own server logs."

This is so idiotic that I have trouble even responding. He didn't tell anything private, just how and where to find the guy?

Bookmark/Search this post with:
  • Delicious
  • Digg
  • StumbleUpon
  • Propeller
  • Reddit
  • Magnoliacom
  • Newsvine
  • Furl
  • Facebook
  • MySpace
  • Twitter
  • Google
  • Yahoo
  • Buzz Up!
  • LinkedIn
  • Technorati
  • Icerocket

Trackback URL for this post:

http://blog.infinitemonkeysblog.com/?q=trackback/6844

Comments

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
Thu, 11/19/2009 - 12:10 — Joel

This guy should lose his job

When I was helping manage comments at a previous employer of mine, we wouldn't turn over the smallest piece of identifying information about our commenters unless we were acting under the order of a subpoena. (This ended up being pretty crucial in a murder trial that we were covering at the time.) And when we did turn that information over, we did so in a way that A) made sure the public knew what we were doing and why and B) let them know we wouldn't turn over their information without a subpoena.

When you're in the position this social media editor is in, your job is to foster community -- and one way you do that is by taking all reasonable measures to safeguard the privacy of your commenters who want it. The Dispatch's social media editor clearly doesn't understand his job, and probably needs to be shuttled off to a position that requires less discretion.

Thu, 11/19/2009 - 12:45 — Wry Mouth

Weasel Overcome

sanction him somehow. What's his justification? *He* thought somebody else's thoughts were tasteless/stupid, so he gets to lower the boom on them?

Man; if I had a nickel (or a magic wand) for every time *I* thought someone was being tasteless or out-of-bounds... remember; I teach high school for a living...

.
"Don't confuse political savvy with competence or principles." -- RobbL, 2009

Thu, 11/19/2009 - 12:58 — Khabalox

I teach high school for a

I teach high school for a living...

And it's a school day!! :0 I'm calling your employer.

Thu, 11/19/2009 - 13:56 — Wry Mouth

HA HA BREAK TIME

Go ahead, copper! You can't lay a glove on me! :)

.
"Don't confuse political savvy with competence or principles." -- RobbL, 2009

Sun, 11/22/2009 - 22:30 — Ben

Hit and Run's follow-up to the Post-Dispatch's weaseltude

Oh, this post at Hit & Run is glorious to behold, from the headline down. And as a result, now we know of the existence of a site called kurtgreenbaumisapussy.com, which couldn't possibly be bad. Could it?