Soda Sabotage

Last month, Coke was forced to pull their #MakeItHappy social media campaign.  It was an unexpected (for Coke) situation that could have been avoided if it wasn’t for the fact that the campaign’s algorithm went off the rails with some help from Gawker.

Taking this back to the beginning, Coke decided it wanted to make the internet a more positive place and so they had an algorithm developed that would take tweets tagged with the #MakeItHappy hashtag on Twitter and turn them into positive digital pictures supporting the new positive energy courtesy of Coke.  It was then predicted that tweeple would retweet the new, improved, positive messages that now had positive images attached to them.

On the surface, this sounds like a fantastic campaign even if no real person was going to monitor the tweets that passed by way of Coke’s account and bright, shiny polishing bot!

Gawker saw an opportunity to derail the campaign by creating its own Twitter bot named @MeinCoke.  As with the Coke campaign, they tagged their tweets with #MakeItHappy which triggered Coke’s Twitter bot to do its magic and generate cute pictures to go with the hashtag comments.  The problem was that Gawker was taking quotes from Adolph Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”

The campaign was suspended but not without a statement issued by Coke that read:

Building a bot that attempts to spread hate through #MakeItHappy is a perfect example of the pervasive online negativity Coca-Cola wanted to address with this campaign.

That’s all fine and dandy were it not for the fact that Coke seems to have missed an important lesson:  Nothing can replace the human touch.  In other words, if a living, breathing human being had been in charge, the bot-generated comments would most likely been caught before they were processed and put through.  Bottom line?  White supremacist ASCII art stood a worse chance of being caught be a real person then it’s more likely than not that this situation never would have happened.

While most everyone is busy wagging a finger at Gawker, they seem to be overlooking the fact that Coke didn’t consider all the possibilities about what could conceivably go wrong with their campaign.  This is why we, as entrepreneurs and small business owners, need to keep an eye on our social media accounts to make sure that the message that’s being sent out on our behalf is actually what we intended to see put out there!

Elyse Bruce

 

SUGGESTED READING

Coca-Cola Pulls Twitter Campaign After It Was Tricked Into Quoting Mein Kampf
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/feb/05/coca-cola-makeithappy-gakwer-mein-coke-hitler

Coke’s Automated #MakeItHappy Twitter Promotion Runs Into Trouble
http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/18059.aspx

Coke Tweets Inspirational Hitler Art, Isn’t Actually That Into “Mein Kampf”
http://www.fastcompany.com/3042007/coke-tweets-inspirational-hitler-art-isnt-actually-that-into-mein-kampf

Coca Cola Pulls Twitter Campaign After Hitler Related Sabotage
http://kfor.com/2015/02/05/coca-cola-pulls-twitter-campaign-after-hitler-related-sabotage/

 

The New Cyber Safety Act

Everyone agrees that bullying and cyberbullying is wrong. People shouldn’t be bullied in real life and people shouldn’t be cyberbullied online. It’s doubtful that you will find any reasonable person who thinks otherwise.

Last week, mainstream media reported that Nova Scotia had passed Bill 61, known as the Cyber Safety Act that was introduced in April. The intent was to provide another legal recourse for Victims of cyberbullying that would allow them or third-party witnesses of the abuse to request a CyberSCAN investigative unit to step in and take action against the alleged cyberbully or cyberbullies.

According to the CBC, Glen Canning, father of Rehtaeh Parson, was quoted as saying:

“It’s going to be a big wake-up call. Once you get a few people in court, and being charged with cyberbullying crimes — or you’ve got some parents being brought up on charges of crimes their children committed — then you’re going to see people turn their heads and kind of take notice that you’re not hiding behind keyboards anymore.”

While much of what Mr. Canning said is correct, the fact of the matter is that the wording of an act that’s rushed through oftentimes has flaws in it that allow the letter of the law to be misused and abused. In this case, the concern many have with this law is that it opens the door to bullies and cyberbullies who know how to play the system to further victimize their targets.

Here’s what Bill 61 says in part:

In other words, the Cyber Safety Act allows an individual to apply to the courts to have an Order of Protection issued against an ALLEGED cyberbully based on evidence provided to the courts by the individual — or someone acting on behalf of the individual — making the application. The accused is NOT granted the opportunity to defend himself or herself against the allegations.

If a bully was so inclined (and there are many who would feel so inclined), he or she could make up evidence — with or without the help of a third-party — against a target and victimize that person by way of an Order of Protection.

The Order of Protection would, among other things, deprive the alleged bully of many things, not the least of which would be the right to speak out against his or her accuser as it’s very likely that such an Order would include that the alleged bully be prohibited from saying or writing anything about his or her accuser.

The bully could then make up more evidence — with or without the help of a third-party — that would make it appear that the accused had violated the Order, and the accused could then face not only stiff fines, up to two years less a day in jail, stiff fines and jail time, and quite possibly a civil suit launched by the bully.

It’s not just a pocket of people who see the inherent dangers in the legislation. Others have seen it and have written about it. People like Jesse Brown of Maclean’s Magazine.

What problems do you see resulting from this legislation in Nova Scotia? Do you think it’s a good move, or are you concerned that it will lead to even more victimization of those who are targeted for abuse by savvy bullies who know their way around the system?

Elyse Bruce

Crying Wolf

Recently, a visitor to this blog site accused me of being a bully because I had included a graphic in an article. Including the graphic in the article fell well within the Fair Dealing clause of Canadian copyright law. That being said, the visitor posting the comment felt he or she was well within his or her rights to allege that including the graphic was online bullying of Jenny Potter.

Bullying is defined as the use of force or coercion to abuse or intimidate others, and is characterized by behavior that intends to gain power over another person or group of persons. The law has identified four basic types of abuse:

1. emotional (sometimes called relational);
2. verbal;
3. physical; and
4. cyber.

According to Emily Bazelon — a senior editor at Slate, a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine, and the Truman Capote Fellow for Creative Writing and Law at Yale Law School.– she wrote in an OpEd piece for the New York Times that states:

“[quote] The definition of bullying adopted by psychologists is physical or verbal abuse, repeated over time, and involving a power imbalance. In other words, it’s about one person with more social status lording it over another person, over and over again, to make him miserable [end quote].”

Many states, including Indiana, have codes that clearly define what constitutes bullying at the school level.  The Indiana Code IC 20-33-8-0.2 states that bullying is:

“[quote] … overt, unwanted, repeated acts or gestures, including verbal or written communications or images transmitted in any manner (including digitally or electronically), physical acts committed, aggression, or any other behaviors, that are committed by a student or group of students against another student with the intent to harass, ridicule, humiliate, intimidate, or harm the targeted student and create for the targeted student an objectively hostile school environment [end quote].”

Using a graphic in a blog article within the context of Fair Dealing as identified in Canadian copyright law has absolutely nothing to do with bullying. But posting a comment to a blog, using someone else’s email address, and accusing the writer of a blog article of bullying for using a graphic within the context of Fair Dealing as identified in Canadian copyright law certainly says a lot about the person falsely alleging online bullying.

It’s getting to a point with some people that they yell “bully” or “online bully” as often as the boy who cried wolf in the well-known Aesop fable, “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.”

Of course, there’s also the matter of impersonation which is defined by the dictionary as a deliberate attempt to deceive someone by pretending to be another person.  In posting a comment to a blog (even this one) using someone else’s email address and purporting to be someone he or she is not, is definitely an issue worthy of discussion.  But that’s a blog article for another day.

Elyse Bruce

SUGGESTED READING

Racist Graffiti Found In Keene Park
http://www.mykawartha.com/news-story/3894881-racist-graffiti-found-in-keene-park/

City Ranks Third For Number Of Hate Crimes
http://www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com/2011/06/14/city-ranks-third-for-number-of-hate-crimes

Hate Crimes On The Rise 
http://ontario.cmha.ca/news/hate-crimes-on-the-rise/#.UecUA9LUmP0

Peter Tweeter Exposé
https://elysebruce.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/peter-tweeters-expose/

Peter Tweeter Objections Heard
https://elysebruce.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/peter-tweeter-objections-heard/

Bullies Abound
https://elysebruce.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/bullies-abound/

Peterborough Is Number One
https://elysebruce.wordpress.com/2013/07/18/peterborough-is-number-one/

Peterborough Is Number One

In February, I wrote about the potential for Category 17 of the PeterTweeter Awards being misappropriated for the purpose of bullying others living in Peterborough.  The cry went out loudly from people such as Jeannine Taylor, Maryam Monsef, Stuart Harrison, Rick Dolishny, Mike Moring and other PeterTweeters that my comments were, in their opinion,”bullying” and “terrorism.”

Now the truth can be told by way of independent third party observations and data collection.

It’s a FACT that Peterborough is Number One … for police reported hate crimes in 2011!

“No,” some of you might be saying to yourselves incredulously.  “Surely there’s no such evidence to support such a claim!”

Alas, dear readers, there is.  It’s not data collected and compiled by a questionable researcher.  It’s not data collected and compiled from questionable sources.   In fact, it’s data collected and compiled from a reputable source that corporations, organizations, agencies and more quote in reports and documents all the time:  Statistics Canada.

UPDATE (22 July 2013):  Posting copyrighted materials (with proper citing of sources) falls under the heading of Fair Dealing which is part of Canadian copyright law.  It permits certain uses of copyright material in ways that do not unduly threaten the interests of copyright owners, while at the same time having social benefits.  Fair Dealing allows for  criticism, review and news reporting, even on the Internet on websites and in blog articles. Posting the graphic by Jenny Potter (which included proper citing of the course) falls under the heading of Fair Dealing.  I have removed the graphic because the Peterborough Examiner requested in writing that it be removed from this article.

There it is in black and white.  In Peterborough, there are more hate crimes per capita than in the metropolitan centers of  Ottawa, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, Montreal, and Windsor.  And those are just the police-reported instances of hate crimes.  There are a great number of instances of hate crimes that go unreported because the victims fear for their safety, and the safety of their loved ones.

To be fair, Peterborough was in third place for the dubious title in 2009 and in fourth place in 2010 (although Sarah Deeth of the Peterborough Examiner wrote that Peterborough was in third place) before achieving first place in 2011.

But that doesn’t bode well either.  Being anywhere on the list is shocking, but being in the top 5 for 3 years running is something residents of Peterborough need to take a look at and seriously question.

With that kind of reputation for hate crime activity, is it any wonder that reasonable people who are concerned about bullying, cyberbullying, mobbing, cybermobbing, and hate crimes (in Peterborough as well as abroad) take reasonable steps to prevent this kind of behavior from continuing (in Peterborough as well as abroad) when it shows up in something as seemingly innocuous as a PeterTweeter Award online open category nomination?

UPDATE (11 March 2014):  This article was posted in the Peterborough Examiner earlier today, and states that violent crimes were up by 11% in Peterborough in 2013.  Marijuana and cocaine were the top two drug choices, and $1.5 million in drugs were seized in 2013.

Elyse Bruce

SUGGESTED READING

Racist Graffiti Found In Keene Park
http://www.mykawartha.com/news-story/3894881-racist-graffiti-found-in-keene-park/

City Ranks Third For Number Of Hate Crimes
http://www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com/2011/06/14/city-ranks-third-for-number-of-hate-crimes

Hate Crimes On The Rise
http://ontario.cmha.ca/news/hate-crimes-on-the-rise/#.UecUA9LUmP0

Peter Tweeter Exposé
https://elysebruce.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/peter-tweeters-expose/

Peter Tweeter Objections Heard
https://elysebruce.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/peter-tweeter-objections-heard/

Bullies Abound
https://elysebruce.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/bullies-abound/

 

Censoring George Takei

If anyone thinks they’ll be censoring anything George Takei has to say in the near future, you’d best think twice on that matter.  You see, if there’s anyone who believes in the right to discuss matters — especially controversial matters — that person would be George Takei.

Whether you like his politics or agree with his lifestyle choice, the fact of the matter is, he’s willing to defend your right to free speech.  And what’s more, he goes out on a limb and states that while your right to free speech doesn’t embrace hate speech, it certainly does preserve your right to have an opinion even if it clashes with his own or other people’s opinions.

Don’t believe me?  Well, here’s what George posted to his Facebook page on May 30, 2013:

I suspect that this concept, while known to reasonable people, will come as a complete surprise to those in Peterborough, Ontario who refer to themselves as PeterTweeters.  After all, who can forget the uproar they caused when the identifier for Category 17 was changed to something more appropriate.  Free speech was equated by PeterTweeters with bullying and terrorism!

One of George’s Facebook friends, Jason Royal, discussed the matter stating in part:

[quote] … our country has turned into if I do not like your opinion you are rascist [sic], homophobic, evil, etc … A personal opinion or believe [sic] that you have while you go about your day earning a living is absolutely ok [end quote].

In other words, a difference of opinion that is well-stated and within the parameters of free speech is just that … free speech.  It isn’t terrorism.  It isn’t bullying.  It isn’t anything other than an opinion.

Interestingly enough, just a few weeks ago, a group of PeterTweeters were up in arms over an incident that happened at the Aria Night Club where the PeterTweeter Awards were held earlier this year.  The incident resulted in a woman filing a Human Rights complaint against the night club.  Regardless of what happens with the complaint, the same sort of inappropriate behavior that I was subjected to in February appears to be surfacing and used against the person who filed the complaint.

When someone avails themselves of their rights, it’s not bullying.  It’s not terrorism.  Whether in Canada or the U.S.A., freedom of speech is guaranteed under the respective constitutions.  People need to remember that when they start using words like ‘terrorist’ and ‘bully’ just because they disagree with someone else’s point of view, they are, in effect, only showing their ignorance on the matter.

Elyse Bruce