Accusations and Consequences

Given that online mobs and the damage they do to lives and reputations has become a rather important topic for many, I thought it'd be interesting to talk about this example of someone spreading flat-out lies online.

Basically, someone woke up one morning to find that a stranger was spreading completely false stories about her being in an adulterous relationship. And it was a complete stranger; the only interaction they'd had previously was arguing with each other over a news story on social media. It took a while to even find out the real name of the person who'd created the story and longer still to get them to recant it - and even then, most of the sites to which the story had been posted refused to remove it.

It's an interesting lesson in the consequences of telling lies online, if nothing else. It still surprises me how many people don't quite grasp that just because it's easier to get away with anonymously telling lies about people online doesn't make it anywhere near the right thing to do. And it surprises me how many people are willing to believe such things could be true merely because there's a single random anonymous story about someone.

... Of course, I'm sure any number of people would ask about when it's right to believe stories posted online about others' misdeeds, particularly in the wake of a lot of the recent wave of sexual assault allegations. There are, luckily, a fair number of details that differ between this false allegation and the much better founded allegations which most of those people would refer to.

One is that I have no trouble believing one or two people might collaborate on a malicious lie about someone, but I have a harder time believing the same about one or two dozen. And I likewise have a harder time believing that people will attach their real name to the lies in question - which the person in the above story did not and which many other accusers will. That may not help the average person on the street investigate this sort of thing very easily, but then that's why I pay my subscription fees to various news sources so that their reporters can investigate it if something major comes up.

Now, none of that would be sufficient to prove wrongdoing in a court, and I suppose there might be some cases where it led to the wrong conclusion. But that mostly means that I'm not going to join any online mobs; I may try to avoid assuming that allegations must be true, but that doesn't mean I have to assume the people making them are liars either. 

It demands my caution in what consequences I choose to impose on anyone's behavior, but when has that ever not been a good idea?