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Montana Standard newspaper plans to retroactively unmask anonymous commenters
- matt4077 11y ago"It is not that I am “unwilling to configure our software so that comments posted before the new policy is implemented remain under chosen screen names.” I extensively investigated that possibility and was unfortunately told by our content-management software experts that such a configuration is impossible." Is there actually any possible CMS where this problem cannot be solved in one line of code? It's either a terrible excuse/lie or one of those examples of why I'm so happy not to be working at a large organisation wrangling ancient legacy systems.
- wcummings 11y agoJust to clarify, you work for the Montana Standard?
- matt4077 11y agoEhh.. no. You must have misunderstood me. Or I'm misunderstanding you.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- austenallred 11y agoI cannot imagine a scenario under which this code is impossible to write, but take a few layers of bureaucracy and very few people who actually dare toy with a fragile system, and you have all sorts of impossible-to-fix problems. I remember one programmer that worked for a fairly popular newspaper telling me it was "simply impossible" to change the color of their navbar. They were on wordpress. The news business doesn't think about their CMS that much; it's just a box for them to type into most of the time.
- Mithaldu 11y agoI can. It's really simple too. All you need to do is use a software package like wordpress and not employ any actual developers. CMS packages nowadays allow even large operations to run entirely on point-and-click configuration; but the kind of special case they're being asked for here would very likely require a programmer to actually write code. Note how the quoted person says "content-management software experts" and "configuration", not "developers" and "feature". Welcome to software in the new millenium.
- chris_wot 11y agoWell, that's fine but with any decision comes downsides. If you marry your critical business operations to inflexible software, or you refuse to employ even one developer (or maintain a contract with an external company) then you may find that down the track you cannot make important changes to your business. Case in point: the situation detailed in this article. My sympathy is essentially at zero level here. In this situation their privacy policy, a legal contract, guarantees they won't reveal the names of contributors even if the privacy policy changes. There is no excuse whatsoever to violate such a legal document. If they find their software cannot handle what they want to do without violating this legal contract, what this means is they cannot take the action that will violate it. Should the MT Standard take actions to wilfully violate their privacy agreement, then they open themselves to lawsuits. In some cases I wonder if a court might grant an injunction forbidding them from implementing their new policy?
- georgemcbay 11y ago
- danso 11y agoNo, there is no possible CMS where this is impossible. But I imagine it would take some custom configuration...e.g. a change to the database call that fetches comments to select only the username field, not the email, for articles before 2015-12-31. Imagining the logic and code is not hard. But if you are a non-programmer, this is not how you think about things. Most people are trained to use a CMS, and every other computing interface. They don't understand that computer software can be changed. For them, hearing that it is impossible to reconfigure a CMS is like hearing that it is impossible to reconfigure a 1998 Honda Civic to become a hovercraft -- that is, it sounds completely reasonable because "that's the way these things are". Edit: Another factor...it seems that the Standard uses a hosted CMS solution...which yeah, would pretty much make it impossible for this fix to originate in-house: http://www.townnews365.com/ http://www.townnews365.com/
- wvenable 11y agoIt's not impossible -- but the company that maintains their website does not know how to do it and therefore told their client that it is impossible. This is, unfortunately, not uncommon at all.
- brazzledazzle 11y agoThey're just another customer to that company and there's no way they're going to throw developer time to create a feature to fix a self-created crisis for a single customer. Telling them it's not possible is easier than saying that.
- wvenable 11y agoI usually say it will cost "this" much and then it's no longer about whether it's possible or not. I always tell my clients almost nothing is impossible, it's just a matter of time, effort, and cost.
- briandh 11y agoA quick look at their source suggests that they are using something called BLOX CMS, and their nameservers are run by TownNews, which is apparently the company behind BLOX. BLOX is advertised as "Cloud-based" with "No hardware or software to install & maintain". This all suggests that they actually cannot make such a change, by virtue of using an SaaS solution they have no control over.
- brazzledazzle 11y agoSure, but they could change all old accounts to use the screen name as the username, change their email address (locking them out of it) and force everyone to reregister. It's a pain in the ass but it's the only practical solution given the constraints. But do they really need those comments on old articles? Why not just delete them? This is a community paper. How often are people reading old articles and how often are those people reading the comments? I have to question if the management of the paper are motivated more by unmasking certain shitty commenters than by anything else.
- degenerate 11y agoOr: UPDATE user SET realname=screenname WHERE screenname IS NOT NULL; Done!
- pavel_lishin 11y agoAt worst, couldn't they run a query to change their commenters' first names to their screen names and their last names to an empty string?
- untog 11y ago> Is there actually any possible CMS where this problem cannot be solved in one line of code? The mistake here is assuming that the news organization has a) a developer b) access to the code Quite simply, most are far too cash-strapped and rely on third-party services.
- chris_wot 11y agoThey'll be even more cash strapped when the lawsuits start rolling in. What a disaster!
- such_a_casual 11y agoThe guy is an absolute imbecile. He states that it is a small city where people know each other, and then immediately states that he doesn't think there will be consequences for most of his readers. He writes his own counterargument. There will be consequences for these people because it is such a small city. And he doesn't care because he thinks the only people who will be harmed are "meanies". What if your political/social/moral views differ from your parents or your wife and you don't want them to know in order to keep the peace. A simple google search on the site for your real name will take them to your comments. Those people could be genuinely curious to read what you have to write, with no il intent of "catching" you whatsoever. There will be plenty of innocent people who are harmed by this. Especially since the people that are being commented about in these articles are people who are known irl, not just names on paper. Privacy is more than about meanies on the internet, and this idiot should be fired, if only for telling the lie you quoted. Are the people of Montana to be treated like a bunch of inbred hill people who don't about these fancy city computers? His entire response was unacceptable and poorly thought out.
- pointytrees 11y agoI suspect even if it were a compiled Java binary with lost source code, this could still be solved with one line of code. Sigh.
- alexc05 11y agoNo way! He just needs a new CMS expert. Here's one option: UPDATE Users SET Secret_RealName = Avatar_ChosenName WHERE 1=1 If they run that on their CMS database's Users table (with appropriate adjustments for actual column names) They destroy the old users' real name by replacing it with their Avatar name. This would preserve all old comments' anonimity. Active users could edit their names back to "real" if they wanted. There's no way there's a CMS where a fix is impossible. The result in this case might be a little unsavory but its far from the only option... Just the cheapest guaranteed one that I can think of.
- kuschku 11y agoWell, they don’t have database access – they use BLOX, a "website as a service" system.
- tosseraccount 11y agoI'm in serious trouble.
- racerror 11y agoI'm pretty sure this is why their experts deem this impossible: "[x] Display Screen Names [] Display Real Names" http://docs.townnews.com/kbpublisher/Comment-Manager-Settings_7971.html#Presentation_subpanel http://docs.townnews.com/kbpublisher/Comment-Manager-Setting...
- asciimo 11y agoWhy not create a new user named Legacy Anonymous and reassign all anonymous comments to it?
- pavel_lishin 11y agoIt might make comment chains really difficult to follow.
- Riseed 11y agoTrue. But that's preferable to de-anonymizing information.
- chris_wot 11y agoIt is not that I am “unwilling to configure our software so that comments posted before the new policy is implemented remain under chosen screen names.” I extensively investigated that possibility and was unfortunately told by our content-management software experts that such a configuration is impossible. So what? If it is impossible, then your privacy policy was clear you will protect the identity of posters. Heaven help journalistic sources if they apply the same policy to anonymous sources! Here are your options: 1. Tell the CRM writers the situation is unacceptable, and force them to fix the issue 2. Get a new, sane CRM that can actually do something that should be a complete no brainer: allow previous posts to remain as-is. Then fire the person who chose the unbelievable bad CRM you actually forked over money for. 3. If neither of those options are possible, then do not proceed with you new policy until which time you make the impossible, possible. Frankly, you have Paul Levy on your tail. Be prepared for some substantial lawsuits from an incredibly tenacious and effective lawyer.
- iamsohungry 11y agoThis is both incompetent and dangerously irresponsible.
- killface 11y agoWhile all of us call BS on the tech team saying it "can't" be done [1], I'm all for this. If you're saying mean/hateful stuff online, you deserve to have your real name attached to it. It's amazing how much more polite people are when they don't have a wall of anonymity protecting them. [1]: My bet's on people who can barely use a computer stood up a wordpress or joomla site, and only really understands how to edit configs, not actually change the programming.
- pavel_lishin 11y agoThe definition of "mean" is pretty subjective. Elected officials ought to be subject to criticism. What's your name, btw?
- Shivetya 11y agomy issues are that mean and hateful are fully separate categories and neither seems to have an agreed upon definition. Just look at colleges today where anything is hateful if someone complains. Worse many who do put their name forward are threatened by these groups in an attempt to silence dissenting opinion. Threats on the other hand should suffer exposure. Being politically incorrect isn't hateful or mean but there many who will claim in. The danger is we are basically going to silence some who have real reason to fear persecution.
- andreasvc 11y agoHave you looked at Youtube comments in the past few years? This claim is absolutely, demonstrably false. People say mean/stupid things when they feel there won't be any repercussions. Not having your name attached to something might have some correlation with that, but it's certainly not the cause.
- ncallaway 11y ago1) This policy doesn't apply only to comments that say "mean/hateful stuff". It applies to ALL comments. Is your assertion that there is never any value for anonymous comments? Is your assertion that ONLY mean/hateful stuff should get attached to real names, and that positive well reasoned arguments should stay anonymous? Or is your argument that we should call well-intentioned valuable anonymous comments " collateral damage" in the war against mean things said online? 2) If you think that ONLY mean/hateful stuff needs to be attached to a real name, who gets to be the arbiter of this policy? 3) What about the legally binding promise made in the MT Standard's privacy policy where they said they would NOT share that information with third parties? And they further said that updates to the privacy policy could not affect comments retroactively? Are we willing to let a company get away with flagrantly violating their privacy policy so that we can win the war against "mean/hateful" stuff that is said online? Edit: I also notice that you are posting here under the anonymous screenname "killface", while I'm posting with my first initial and last name. Ironic.
- ncallaway 11y agoThis seems like a pretty clear-cut violation of their privacy policy. As Mr. Volokh has noted they have promised in their privacy policy to not share this information with third parties: "We will not share individual user information with third parties unless the user has specifically approved the release of that information. " Further, they have even explicitly stated that they cannot retroactively change the privacy policy to affect old comments: "Of course, our use of information gathered while the current policy is in effect will always be consistent with the current policy, even if we change that policy later." Given that, I don't see how this isn't a violation of their privacy policy. The FTC suggests that they are willing to enforce companies that mis-use personal information [1]. Given all of this, I highly encourage anyone who has posted anonymously on the MT Standard to report them to the FTC using the following form: https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/Company#crnt https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/Company#crnt [1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/media-resources/protecting-consumer-privacy/enforcing-privacy-promises https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/media-resources/protecting-c...
- such_a_casual 11y agoI hope this reinforces the idea that you should not give your real information to any source unless absolutely necessary (website or otherwise). Privacy is not a right in the digital age.
- mansilladev 11y agoThe legal exposure they're opening up is irresponsible to the business, aside from the betrayal of trust to their readership. All of us developers here know how easy of a workaround this is even without making mods to a SaaS app that they have no control over. Just convert all old legacy comments to new faux accounts. The SaaS provider can do this with a script, or the newspaper could just do this all my hand in an admin UI. None of this makes sense. It's pure laziness.
- andrewbinstock 11y agoIf commenters can opt out of having their old comments posted, then the Standard can opt out everyone who has not opted in. The only reason the Standard has this problem is because they want to retain old comments even though doing so would violate their privacy policy.
- klean92 11y agoSome people may have died, therefore have a hard time opt-out. Exposing them after their death is so wrong.
- eveningcoffee 11y agoLesson learned - never give out your real name if you do not want it to be published or apply heavy self censoring if you do.
- jacquesm 11y agoThat's actually two lessons. The second one is that if you write something online you should assume that it is tied to your real identity.
- eveningcoffee 11y agoWell, if you advertise your name, then of course. In any other case the answer is like in the real life: it depends.