The Unfortunate Reality of Cyberbullying - And What You Can Do About It

Greetings everybody, welcome to the Wednesday, July 27th, 2016 episode of Free Webinar Wednesdays. This is Eric Cook and I'm with WSI Digital Marketing where we work with businesses and organizations on helping them better understand and leverage the power of the internet as a strategic business tool. You can learn more about me and WSI online at www.poweredbywsi.com. With me this week is my good friend and Free Webinar Wednesday partner and all-around great guy, Mr. Jeff Simpkins. Jeff, say hello to everybody out there in Free Webinar Wednesday world.

Greetings everybody, this is Jeff Simpkins. I'm with Community Bank Consulting Inc., and you can learn more about me online at www.communitybankconsulting.com. Cool.

So where are you in the world these days, Mr. Simpkins?

I am in the Carolinas today. What about you?

Making, making my journey to Pennsylvania. I will be speaking for the Pennsylvania Bankers Association, teaching at their Advanced School of Banking, which is going on this week. So I I doubt any of those bankers are listening because they're probably in class right now. I teach a 2-hour session on social media strategies for community bankers. I'm going to be doing that Friday morning. I'm kind of making my way. I pit stopped at a friend's place in Ohio. We'll continue on. I have a meeting with a client in Ohio tomorrow and then State College.

Awesome.

I've been doing that for the last 3 years, and I can say State College is not an easy place to get to if you're driving, but once you're there, it is a very cool place to visit. So being an avid cyclist and outdoorsy person, there's a lot of really cool stuff going on, and I enjoy my time there. So it'll be fun.

I'm not sure State College is an easy place to get to if you're flying either.

Yeah, probably not, because I don't know if they have an airport. I'm sure it's not a very large one. So I've driven all 3 years and have my bicycles with me, and we'll be spending some time next week actually enjoying some mountain bike trails. So probably could provide notice here. I was going to do it at the end of the show as well. We'll not be having a Free Webinar Wednesdays next week. So that show will be canceled, and we'll put notification out onto the website and to our Facebook page. 'Cause I will hopefully be on the saddle of my mountain bike enjoying some pristine mountain bike trails in the mountains of Pennsylvania. So hopefully coming back unscathed.

Have you found a watering hole in State College, Pennsylvania that has a bacon happy hour like the one in Madison, Wisconsin?

I have not, but very close friends of mine actually— he's the head brewmaster for Happy Valley Brewing Company. They don't have a lot of bacon options on the menu, but they make an amazing baked pretzel that is used from the spent grain that they produce the beer with. The baked pretzel with cheese and salt, I'm drooling, kind of turning into Pavlovian dog right now just thinking about how good that tastes. pretzel is going to taste on Saturday. So, and of course they've got really good beer too, so I'm excited.

I can remember having a pretzel like you're describing at a microbrewery in Nashville, so yes, they are delicious.

Yep, so that, that will be very good. So cool. Well, as much as I'd love to talk about beer and pretzels all day long, we've got an even more important topic to talk about today for our show, and we have a guest who is waiting patiently. And I know she's a little bit more of a margarita drinker than a beer drinker, so I do know that much about Deborah. But before we officially introduce Deborah again, because she's been on the show before, I want to remind everybody that today's webinar and all Free Webinar Wednesdays are recorded and made available at freewebinarwednesdays.com, so you can check it out there, share it with your friends and coworkers. And if you have a question or a comment, we certainly love it when we get engagement from our live audience. So feel free to go ahead and use the chat function within your control panel and let us know what you think while we're going through today's show. So with that, I am going to work the wonders of GoToWebinar, and I'm going to send our guest, Deborah Gonzalez, the screen so she can show her PowerPoint. And while she's doing that, I will officially welcome her to the show. Deborah is an entertainment entertainment law and social media attorney out of the Athens, Georgia area. I am proud to say that not only is she a business associate of mine because we are co-founders of a company, I guess for lack of a better— an effort called Digital Risk and Compliance Partners, and we work together producing and delivering digital risk assessments for clients. So I get to work with her on a regular basis, but she's also a good friend and is kind enough to allow us to use her home on our way to Florida as a pit stop, and all too well understands the joys of golden retriever life, and I think probably goes through a couple of vacuum bags after we leave her house once Ryder and Lily depart and their tumbleweeds are left. But Deborah is a great sport, and we talk a lot about social media and how it pertains to legal and compliance issues for banks and in the news recently, the Ghostbusters incident with Leslie Jones and Taylor Swift, and Robin Williams from last year. Cyberbullying is something that is unfortunately somewhat timely, and I couldn't think of anybody better to do a session on this than Deborah. So with that long-winded blah blah intro, Deborah, thank you for joining us on Free Webinar Wednesdays, and welcome back to the show. We're so glad to have you with us again.

Well, thank you for inviting me, Eric and Jeff. I'm really glad to be here. I'm really glad to be speaking about this particular issue, but I do want to say before we start that you guys now have me hungry for pretzels. So— Our job is done.

Perfect.

That's what I was hoping for.

I don't go for the beer, but man, pretzels, yeah, I can go for some of those. You are going to have to get that for me. But today, you know, and one of the things that I want to sort of put on the side is that when most people think of cyberbullying, they're thinking about what happens with kids in schools. And we're going to be looking at, well, what happens with adults in this issue of cyberbullying? Now what's really interesting is we have a statistic that right now in the workplace, 33% of employees will say that they have been cyberbullied by either a supervisor or a peer. And so it's really interesting that this is not something that is just relegated to the playground or just for people under the age of 18. We're actually seeing this happen in all generations. And I want to go through why we're going to talk about this. Then I want to give some— a definition about what cyberbullying is and some examples so that you might actually read through these examples and say, oh my God, you know what, I've actually been cyberbullied. I didn't realize what what it was. Some of us might call it being— somebody being passive-aggressive, right? But it actually does fall into this definition of cyberbullying. Now, one of the arguments or defenses that come up with cyberbullying is the idea of our First Amendment and our freedom of speech. And so I want to talk about how those two relate to each other and how they are not necessarily mutually exclusive or an absolute defense to this inappropriate behavior online. We're going to talk a little bit about some examples that are out there. And as Eric sort of pointed out when he came to me, he really wanted to know about Leslie Jones and Kim Kardashian and Taylor West. And then I brought up the issue of what happened to Robin Williams' daughter Zelda, because I think each of those— will give us some lessons for us to take a look at what's happening with our own online reputation for ourselves as well as for our businesses. Then I want to talk about what, what are the consequences if this is happening, why is it happening, and why isn't somebody being held accountable for this kind of behavior, or are they, and where is the law when it comes to this idea of some crime and punishment for people who are misbehaving. And then I want to end with some useful tips for you, 5, 6 tips, very simple. But if something is going on about cyberbullying, ways that you can report it and try to help with the etiquette and the civility of the internet. And then I'll give us some time for questions and answers. Why do I speak about cyberbullying whenever I have a chance? To me it's because, and you see it here, Houston, we have a problem. The headlines are full of people really misbehaving online. In fact, one of the headlines that I saw yesterday says we haven't quite got the formula down to fight bad behavior on social media. And so I think it's important that we understand that this is a real issue. that we need to be concerned about, not just as parents, but as adults, you know, in our workplace, and also adults in our community, to make sure that we're seeing this. The other thing is, you know how they used to say, well, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. And so some people don't understand that these— this cyberbullying, right, it usually happens through some kind of written mechanism, even if that writing is an image or an emoji or a photograph. It seems that it's explicitly expressed in one of these social media networks. And as Eric had written about in the summary of this, it's not just Twitter, it's not just Facebook. We're seeing it in Instagram, basically in any social media platform where somebody can leave a comment. We're seeing it on blogs in those comment sections. But this statement, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me, is really a falsity. And we see that because, you know what, the words do not act alone. The fact is that when these words are given to people, they come within a context, right? Sometimes it depends on the words that are used. Sometimes it depends on the sequence in which they're written or they're said, you know. Emoticons came up because there was no way to tell inflection or tone in our emails and this written communication. We just didn't know, was somebody joking with me? So we created the little smiley face emoji to sort of interject some kind of human emotions, things that most of the time if we're face to face, we're going to pick up from somebody's body language, right? And so that tone is sometimes lost. Just think back, you might have had an interaction with a colleague or even with a client via email, and you thought you were making a joke, or they thought they were making a joke, and it really came across the wrong way. And so it can cause a lot of miscommunication, and it can cause some problems down the line. Sometimes it's also the kind of medium that is being used. You know, we're going to talk when we talk about Kim Kardashian, about Snapchat and this social media platform which is considered only to host things temporarily, right? It's going to self-destruct in less than 24 hours, that kind of thing. And yet, even though it puts off that claim, we know that their servers hold on to this stuff. And we also know that people have apps now that will capture it so that it does not go away. Sometimes it's the way that there's some white space with the words, or what words came before, what words came after. And then more importantly as well is that we know now that what happens online affects offline behavior, actually has offline consequences. And so when you combine what is written and what is communicated with the actions that are actually taken You can see why these words become so impactful and have so many consequences in them. So here is a definition that I like to use about cyberbullying. And it, one of the important things is bullying has happened, right? We're going to say, well, I was bullied when I was a little kid. Cyber means that it's happening online. It's happening through the internet and related technologies. Cell phones especially, we're seeing this. And the idea is that there is an intentional use of this technology to harm somebody else, right? It's deliberate. It is repeated. And it is quite hostile. And, you know, some of the examples that I won't necessarily read to you today, but you will have the links to go and actually see the verbiage, you're going to say, my God, that is— That's horrible. That is so full of hate and abuse. Why would somebody put that out? Because the other thing that we understand about social media and the internet is that, you know, when you put something up there, it is up there forever. This is not something that has an expiration date or, you know, even the Snapchat that I mentioned before. There are ways to make that record permanent. And so it really does affect people way beyond that moment that it was there. So these are some examples. Examples of what you might see as cyberbullying. And you notice that I also put the word cyberharassment. And when we look at workplace and what's happening in the workplace and employment law, you will see legislation that's written to address harassment and cyberharassment for adults in the workplace much more than you will see legislation sort of talking about cyberbullying. Bullying in the workplace. So I wanted to make sure we had that word out there because you might hear that more in, for example, an anti-discrimination, anti-harassment policy that your company may have. But, but this is what it might look like: a malicious or threatening email, a text message or tweet, right? Electronic communications that contains jokes about ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or any other topic that would make an individual uncomfortable. And I think, you know, that last part is so broad, right? Any other topic that would make an individual uncomfortable. I mean, if you talk to me about spiders, I'm uncomfortable, right? But that doesn't mean that that's going to take it to the point of cyberbullying. Or does it? I mean, what if they had a photo of me trapped With snakes all over me, wrapped around me, sort of choking my neck, can I then say that that goes to the point of cyberbullying? And that is an important lesson for us to recognize, is that a lot of this is defined by the perspective of the victim. It's about, does the victim feel that they have been bullied? Or harassed. And so, you know, I always tell people, be careful about your humor because what might be funny to you does not necessarily translate to somebody else. And it is quite easy to offend somebody even though you had but the best intention, right? Public shaming via mass email. Be careful about hitting those reply alls. You might be very upset at somebody and You know, the idea of sending it not directly to that person but then sending it to the whole department or even worse yet, sending it to the whole company can get this to the point where the court would say, okay, this is harassment much more than it's just, you know, somebody expressing an opinion. And I think that's the other thing about social media and why these issues come out now is because social media has such an exponential reach, right? It's not just talking to one person, but that person then shares it with somebody else and shares it with somebody else and shares it with somebody else, so that you have this exponential reach of where this very embarrassing photo or tweet or declaration about somebody has gone off. And that, that can lead to some very severe impact for that person. The idea of spreading lies or gossip, when we talk about the rumor mill that usually happens in an office setting or the grapevine that goes there, we used to be at the water cooler, not necessarily anymore. Now we're doing that online in different social media networks, even in different text messaging groups. So it can be, you know, where before we just talked to one person, now what we say to one person might actually go out to 100. So we have to be careful about that. But people will say, well, wait, I have a right to say whatever it is that I want to say. I'm guaranteed freedom of speech and the First Amendment. And this is the actual text of the First Amendment. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. And so many people will say, you know, this guarantees me the right to Post anything I want to on social media. And there are a couple things that we have to realize about that. First of all, it is not absolute. You do not have an absolute right to say anything that you want. And that's because we live in a society that's more than just us, right? It's more than just one person. We have other people that we are in our communities with, and we have to make sure that there's a certain amount Of, you know, some people might say, well, there has to be a certain amount of respect, but there has to be a certain amount of respect not necessarily for each other, but for some common rules so that we can all live together, right? And there are 7 particular types of speech that are not protected at all under the law. And so if one of your posts or one of your employees' posts fall within these 7 types of speech, it is not protected under our First Amendment freedom of speech right. The first one is hate speech, right? That, that is absolutely not protected. Now remember that the Constitution, the First Amendment, is at the federal level. We're not even looking at some of the state laws or state constitutions that will also have some kind of freedom of speech right in them as well, or particular laws that deal with hate speech As we see, any kind of speech that incites violence, right, that sort of is a call to arms or a call to riot, that is not going to be allowed. And you notice it also says if it encourages the audience to commit an illegal or a dangerous act. So, you know, you're not allowed to yell fire in a theater, for example, because the idea of yelling fire in a theater, everybody's going to run out, they're going to jump from their seats, they're going to all try to get out the door. People can actually hurt each other. So even, you know, somebody says, well, it was just trying to be a joke. No, you're actually going to be put in jail because you did that. So you have to be very careful. We have a case a couple of years ago of a couple of young guys in the UK who actually used their— I forget the name— their BlackBerry, right? And they were putting out a message on social media about getting together and protesting and, you know, setting up a riot for something, and they were arrested, and they are now serving 4 years in jail because of inciting these kinds of things. So it's not only the US laws that are looking at this, right? It's also international laws that are looking at this. If it's any kind of posting that will support domestic or foreign terrorist groups— and we're seeing that this one is being looked at very carefully by the government, trying to work with the big tech companies like Facebook, like Twitter, like Google, using this aspect to be able to find certain terrorist groups and their posts that they are making. Any public speech that's made in the conduct of their duties by public employees. Any slander, libel, or defamation. So these are those, right, defamation of character, the idea that somebody has put up either in written form or has spoken doing a false accusation about somebody and that not only did they say something that is a lie, but that it then had consequences to the original person's livelihood. We're going to see how that plays out with celebrities because what's interesting is people will say, wait a minute. celebrities are public figures, right? They put themselves out there. If they want the fame and the fortune, well, then they should also have to take all of the criticisms and attacks that come to them, because they put themselves out there. And people have even said there should be different standards than if it's just a private individual being cyberbullied or cyberharassed, than a celebrity who's being cyberbullied or cyberharassed. And that's a debate that's still going on today. Is there a point where even for a celebrity, the abuse is just too much and needs to be stopped? The next one is the reason why a lot of our companies may have a policy that talks about intellectual property rights and don't publish confidential information, don't publish our trade secrets, don't publish anything that's been copyrighted. By us because those are assets that belong to the company, and so the company has a right to restrict access to that. And so if you then release it, you can be held liable for violating the company's copyright. And then this last one is about true threats, and we're going to see that a little later on. I'm going to give you an example of what we consider a true threat here. So let's take a look at the headlines. Let's see how many of these maybe you've been following or maybe have heard about but not necessarily really knew exactly what was going on. And the first one is the one that Eric mentioned first, Leslie Jones. So she is part of the 4-woman lead for the Ghostbusters reboot, and apparently even before the movie came out, there was a lot of discussion. People who said, you know, this is such a great movie, don't mess with it, it shouldn't be about women. Rotten Tomatoes said that it actually had, you know, the most people who disliked the trailer ever for this Ghostbusters movie. But it seemed that once the movie was actually released, it sort of opened up the floodgates for criticism against the people who were involved in the movie, but especially so against Leslie Jones, one of the actresses. And, you know, she was getting tweets that were just horrible. They were filled with hate words, violent words. And look at here, they even talked about her dead brother. Okay, so those of you want to argue, well, she is a celebrity, obviously her dead brother is not. And then they went even further to criticize the color of her skin, and people were posting pictures of apes and making a comparison there. And I don't know if you guys remember, there was a situation where a little 5-year-old boy had fallen into a gorilla enclosure and then they shot the gorilla. And so there was even a picture, you know, trying to refer her and relate her to that situation. Very, very hateful. And what she actually did was she started posting screenshots of these different tweets and posts, abusive, and putting them out and saying, hey, This is what's happening to me. This has to stop. And after a few days of that, she then put out this tweet: I leave Twitter tonight with tears and a very sad heart. All this because I did a movie. You can hate the movie, but the I got today was just wrong. And so she left Twitter because it was just Too much. So again, that idea of words, right? Well, a couple things happened when she left Twitter. First of all, a hashtag was started, #LoveForLeslieJay, and friends and other celebrities started coming out condemning these Twitter attacks and calling for Twitter to do something about it, right? And so you have some, just some examples here of some of the positive tweets that were put out there and sort of this hashtag and this response to sort of counter what was happening before. And because of this, Twitter actually took some action and it barred one of the biggest abusers, Milo, and I am going to butcher His name, when I say this, Yiannopoulos, and he is actually the technology editor at a conservative news site, Breitbart. His Twitter handle is @Nero, and he basically launched a whole campaign against Leslie Jones and encouraged his followers to do that as well. And you know, this is one thing, right? If you're going to do some tweets like that to somebody, but then to encourage the followers that you have to do that as well takes it to a different level. So Twitter did bar them. And this is the statement from Twitter. This is from a New York Times article. And they said, people should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter. But no one deserves to be subjected to targeted abuse online, and our rules prohibit inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others. So they did explicitly talk about the fact that this guy Milo was telling his followers to go ahead and abuse her. But they did not necessarily mention him, his name, when they made that statement. They just canceled his account. And then they also said, we've seen an uptick in the number of accounts violating these policies and have taken enforcement action against these accounts, ranging from warnings that also require the deletion of tweets violating our policies to permanent suspension, which is what they did with Milo. And, you know, Twitter, just like most of the other social media platforms, all have policies that talk about how can you use their service, right, their terms of service. what not to post up there, how to be respectful for people. But that doesn't necessarily mean that people will not do this kind of thing. Well, after that, Leslie Jones came back. And in fact, once she was back on, she got 100K followers with that. And so you can see here her victorious return to Twitter. So that brings us to the next example. And this, I think, is probably a sadder example than Leslie Jones. This actually happened in 2014. So 2 years ago, Robin Williams had committed suicide. And his daughter, Zelda, who was pretty private at that time, started receiving a bunch of tweets and Instagram messages. Oh, my gosh. And other social media messages about things like she was never there for her father, she didn't love him enough, why didn't she stop him from committing suicide. I mean, it was just all this, as she says, sending negativity. So that idea of why, she's going through this grieving process, why are you adding to this trouble. So she also decided that she was going to leave social media, and she put up an Instagram post and a Twitter post saying that she was out. And Twitter in 2014 came out and says, we're going to review the policies, right? We're going to make them stricter. We're going to give them more teeth. And as you can see with Leslie Jones 2 years later, we're getting the same thing From Twitter. Well, I went back and I went to see her account, and Zelda is actually back on social media and Twitter. And every once in a while, she'll put something out that does relate to her dad. And I just wanted to share a couple of these. When the election gets me down, I remember that Dad would have had a field day roasting it, and I feel a little bit better. Or recently, Garry Marshall had died, and she said, rest in peace, Garry Marshall. You forever changed my father's life and thus mine. Thank you for capturing so much joy on film over and over. And I think what these two, you know, Leslie and Zelda, remind us is that even when people decide to close their accounts, they do come back. And I think one of the reasons for that is because what we're seeing is that social media is so integral to our lives now. It's the way that we communicate. It's the way that we relate to others so much that it's really hard to completely, you know, not be in that online medium. And so it's a reason also to understand why our employees just can't shut it down, right? Why they are going to be involved to a certain extent in this social media policy, because it's become part of our culture, part of our society in that. Now there were no accounts that were suspended though. The way for Zelda, the way that they were for Leslie. But, you know, it did sort of start the conversation of why is this kind of behavior considered okay in an online environment when somebody is grieving for that. And that brings us to probably one of the ones that's still going on today, this idea of Taylor Swift and Kanye West. So let me just give you a little recap of this. Apparently there hasn't been very good blood between Taylor Swift and Kanye West since Kanye had sort of interrupted an award ceremony where Taylor was receiving an award and he sort of stopped her acceptance speech and was on stage screaming how it should have been Beyoncé and just really made a whole mess of it. And at the end of that award show, Beyoncé actually won a different award and then asked Taylor Swift to come on stage and say her acceptance speech as a way to make up for what Kanye had sort of done to her. But we have been led to believe through Taylor Swift's team that, you know, there's this ongoing feud between Taylor Swift and Kanye West that has sort of culminated in Kanye West putting out a song called Famous. And in this song, he actually has some lyrics that sort of say that he and Taylor are going to have sex because he made her famous. And when he refers to her, he uses the B-word that rhymes with witch, right? And then Taylor came out— when that song was released, Taylor came out on social media and said, you know, I never gave permission. That was totally inappropriate. to use my name that way, to call me that. Kanye West started tweeting out that yes, he did talk to her and did get approval from her. And then a couple days later, Kanye West's wife Kim Kardashian released on Instagram and Snapchat a video showing Kanye West on the phone and you can hear Taylor Swift. Oh my God. On the other end sort of talking about the song. Now meanwhile, while all these postings are going on between Taylor Swift and Kanye West, fans of Kanye West were dissing and sending abusive tweets to Taylor, and fans of Taylor were dissing and sending abusive tweets to Kanye. When Kim Kardashian releases this Snapchat story There was a whole backlash against Taylor Swift to the point that even her ex-boyfriend, a guy named Calvin Harris, came out and said that in fact these fights are staged. They are a marketing stunt to sort of protect her goody girl image and they'll pick these kinds of fights with somebody and then just let it go because Because we are actually in an attention economy, right? People are always looking for attention. That's how they get their value, their publicity online on this. So it was pretty interesting to see this all play out. And another part of this came out and said, well, was this handled very differently than Leslie Jones's experience. Because why did it take so long for Twitter to react to Leslie Jones and make sure that abuse stopped when Instagram very quickly created a sort of filter so that people could not put negative comments onto Taylor Swift's Instagram account? And, you know, this has brought up— and the link is there, it's a very interesting article to give a little read to, but does discuss a couple of things like, is there a difference because Taylor Swift is white and Leslie Jones is African American? Should there be a difference because they're celebrities and they should just accept this as part of the price that they have to pay? So I think, you know, those things just reinforce the conversation and the confusion that people are having about this behavior online and just where do we cross the line where we're no longer civil, right? Where everything is just beyond what we should expect from each other online. So are there consequences to this, right? There have been some News articles out there. Can Taylor Swift sue Kim Kardashian for putting out that video if she didn't give permission to put out the video, things like that? Can Milo, the guy who was sending out those abuse to Leslie Jones, can he be sued for something or can he be charged with some kind of criminal charge? And so I just want to give you some examples of where the state of the legal system is right now. And as I said, you know, you usually don't see cyberbullying when it comes to adults. You see the cyberharassment in the legislation. And on a federal level, what we have is the Communications Decency Act. And it was recently— some language was added so that it would include any telecommunications device, so a phone, Whether it's cell phone, satellite phone, or it can also be an iPad or a tablet that has, you know, the ability to make calls or to send information electronically. So that has really been something that's sort of expanded that particular statute. And on the state level, well, we have tons of— every state has some kind of harassment legislation. Some of them include now the idea of cyber harassment or the idea that, you know, harassment can be committed by a device, that it doesn't necessarily mean that somebody has to physically be there. And so you have a link there if you want to take a look. You can go to that link, go to your state, and see what laws are actually active in your state right now. And then we have something called Cyber stalking. And this sort of takes a little bit where cyber harassment is, you know, you're actually going after that person, you're trying to annoy them, you're trying to, you know, just damage them in some way online. Cyber stalking is when, you know, you're actually following that person around. It's not just sending them one tweet or one post. You're actually watching every move that they're making, shadowing them, taking track of where they go, and every time they go someplace, leaving a comment there. For them. On the federal level, one of the things that it requires is that it has to have a true threat requirement. It has to be something that the victim feels that, you know, if they don't get protection, something is going to happen to them. And we've seen this. We've seen where people have claimed, you know, because of the cyber harassment, that there is a True threat and that people are actually going to go after them and are going to harm them. So we do see that a bit. On the civil side, though, we do have some other causes of action that victims can try to pursue. The defamation that I told you about before. And remember that civil, you're asking for money, right? Or you might ask for some kind of injunctive relief like that they take down. All of their posts or that they issue an apology, whereas in criminal you're really talking about this can be life because it deals with prison. So there's a jail sentence there. So civil is a little bit easier to prove because criminal has to be beyond any reasonable doubt, and civil is more likely than not that they have committed this intentional infliction of emotional distress. harassment, invasion of privacy, and those kind of privacy laws. And then copyright violation. And each of these have pros and cons to trying to use them, but they are available now, right? All of these that I talked about, the criminal as well as the civil, these are laws that are on the book now. It's just lots of times people don't know that they have this recourse to them. And even law enforcement sometimes will say, no, we can't do that because that's online. When in fact they do. But what we're seeing is that more and more law enforcement offices and departments are actually opening up special divisions just to deal with online crimes. And this cyber harassment, cyberbullying, all that falls under that category and distinction. So it's nice that we're seeing that they're actually trying to do something in that way. So here are some tips, and these are good whether you're an adult or whether you have a child that might be dealing with this in their life. First of all, we need to recognize what is happening and be honest about it and, you know, educate ourselves about what cyberbullying is, cyberharassment is, and how we can help those who are suffering from this or how to prevent it from happening in our own institutions and our businesses. But sometimes just recognizing that this is cyberbullying— oh, you know, so many times we say, oh, it's just a joke. No, it's not a joke. It's much more serious than that, and in order, you know, for us to maintain some kind of civility and to make sure that our work environment is not hostile, but a good place that people want to go to work, and that way they can be productive, we have to call it what it is. We have to recognize it, we have to label it, and then we can deal with it. But don't respond to this person. You know, you'll hear many times where they say, don't feed the trolls, right? And as much as you want to respond and tell that person, you know, that's not true about me, sometimes that's all that these trolls want. They just want you to talk back to them. They want to get some kind of reaction. And the stronger reaction that they get from you, the happier that they are. So sometimes just ignoring them, maybe they'll go away because they'll pick on somebody who's an easier target, who will actually give them some fun because they're responding back. Document. Make a copy of the message, the photo, the video. Include the URLs. You know, when Leslie Jones started capturing those screen captures of the posts, because anybody who has a Twitter account knows what all of those different tweets are coming in and out all day. There's hundreds, there's thousands of them coming in, so you don't always are able to find that tweet later on. So as soon as you see it, document it, get that screen capture up. That'll always be helpful. The next thing is you can contact the internet service provider. You can contact Twitter and Facebook. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest even, they all have online in their terms of use section and their help centers, they all are trying to do this anti-bullying, anti-harassment section so you can very easily report that something is happening. Now that does not equate to then it will very easily be resolved from them. They have their own terms of service, their own policies. As to how they deal with it. But I think the more that people start reporting this and showing that this is a very real issue that needs to be addressed, then the more that we're going to see that these ISPs and these social media platforms are going to be responding. If it takes it to the level that it's really just gone beyond the line, do file a report with the local police department. There's usually an internet crimes or an online crimes division. And then the other thing that you can do is you can file a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Complaint Center, and you have the website there. And it's not that they can do any enforcement, but what the Internet Crime Complaint Center does is that it puts it in a registry, and so people can see, you know what, be careful about these others. They're abusive. They're trolls. Things like that. We're still at the very beginning stages of understanding why this kind of behavior is happening. There's tons of psychology arguments as to why it's happening. And so we're also just in the beginning of trying to figure out how to make people accountable for it, as we see there. So this is a great book. I want to recommend it. It's called Hate Crimes in Cyberspace. If you're really interested from the legal aspect of it, this is definitely something that you can get. It is an easy read, even though there's some legalese in there. I think it's pretty good in terms of just something that anybody can relate to. Another one for those of you who are really concerned about your reputation and this harassment against your company, right, or against your business. So Digital Assassination by Richard Torrensano. It is a 2011 book, but believe it or not, 5 years later, there's so much in it that is still so relevant because we are still dealing with the same things, unfortunately. So that's another good resource for you. And for those of you who are looking at cyberbullying from the much more juvenile section, we have a Cyberbullying Corner with a blog and resources, and you can follow us on the Twitter handle of Law2Cyberbullying, and you can get stuff there. And we do tweet not just about the juveniles and cyberbullying, but about cyberharassment and what's happening in the workplace. So I will leave it there, and we'll open it up for questions.

Tons of great information. Thank you so much. And again, if you are listening live and you've got a question, or you want to make a comment, or get clarification, please, please, please use the chat function and let us know. I like the fact, and I knew that you would, because I've seen these statistics before, but I like the fact that you led off the session talking about that this isn't just an issue with middle schoolers sending nasty text messages back and forth to one another. That there's a legitimate business— I don't want to say need, but business concern or awareness that needs to come as a result of this. And all too often your online identity is the only thing that people know about you. And in a world where maybe that's the first impression that you make because somebody hears about you, they go online, they do some research, There's certainly some real damage that can be done if somebody decides that they want to go after you, whether they're intending to bully you or just tarnish your business's reputation. The whole concept of online reputation management, I think this falls under that nicely, but certainly with a little bit more of an edge from a bullying perspective. This is all really good stuff and hopefully a good reminder to those that are listening That this is stuff that needs to be paid attention to. So, Jeffrey, I want to give you an opportunity to offer some observations. I know we talked earlier today about the show, and you indicated that you were excited about hearing Deborah present on this. Anything in particular jump out at you that you didn't realize or think about that is now front and center?

I found the bullet-pointed lists at the beginning of the presentation very informative. I made the decision a long time ago not to be a bully in public, so it was interesting learning about, about The things that constitute bullying.

Yeah, I think many people are surprised at that list, right? But I think one other thing that people are surprised at is the idea that freedom of speech is not absolute, that there are actually some things that we cannot say, or in some places that we cannot say them. Yeah.

Your statistic at the beginning that said almost a third of businesses report cyberbullying going on within the organization at an employee level, I think that statistic, at least when I've shared that with other businesses, the reaction is, oh, not in our office. You know, that's not tolerated. That doesn't happen.

What—

I mean, how would an organization go about discovering whether that really is an issue? I mean, how do they determine if it's an issue? Is it a confidential employee survey? Is it social monitoring? I mean, how does one even determine if it's an issue? Because it's probably not something that people really want to talk about.

Well, I think first of all, you don't have a survey that says, have you been bullied? You know, let's have a lunch and learn. Are you being bullied today? You sort of have to go through with this example of what does cyberbullying entail, right? I think if you give people this list that Jeff said, you know, that really surprised me, it helps them see what cyberbullying really is, right? Because all of us I mean, I've received jokes from people that I would say, you know, that probably wasn't the best thing for them to send me as a female or as Latina. I might find it offensive. And then, you know, so many times we sort of justify and say, oh, that's just the way Bill is, right? We sort of excuse it. That's just the way, you know, so-and-so, he didn't mean anything by it. But you know what? Those little bits and that's why that percentage of a third of people seems so high because when people are told this is what it actually looks like, people can say, oh my God, yeah, that did happen to me. I didn't realize it was cyberbullying. I didn't realize that it shouldn't be happening and I have a voice to say I don't want you doing that to me. What we're seeing right now is, for example, companies going back to their anti-harassment, anti-discrimination policies and including language that says that that can actually happen online or through social media or through, like, the definition that the Federal Communications Decency Act said, through some kind of telecommunications device. So I think, first of all, it's about educating our employees what is cyber harassment, what is cyberbullying, what are the examples so that they can understand it. And then to say that, you know what, we're not going to tolerate it here because it affects the workplace environment, it affects then productivity, and it can even affect customer service, right? I mean, you know, there's an old adage in retail: if you want to know how people are treated by their bosses, you go to a retail store. see how they treat the clients, right, the customers that come in.

Yeah, sorry, I was on mute. Well, this, this is, you know, not that we want to call Free Webinar Wednesdays a public service announcement, but I think this has been just that. I think it's an awakening for a lot of folks that might not realize that it's the issue that it is. I just was glad when I sent you that note. I can't remember if it was a text or I called you or whatever, but Sunday when I was listening to the news and hearing some of these things, I'm glad that we were able to get on your schedule and you could join us today. This has been really helpful.

Thank you.

Again, we'll make sure that this recording is up on Free Webinar Wednesdays. You can share it. Then maybe if you want to just hop back over to the contact info, if folks out there are interested in touching base with you to talk further about these things like policies and procedures and other sorts of stuff unique to their own organization, you know, there's all of Deborah's contact information, and I'm sure she would welcome an opportunity to speak.

Absolutely. Give me a shout out. Until then, be nice to each other.

What's that?

Be nice to what?

Be nice to each other.

Yes, absolutely. And that's what it just boils down to, that. And I think Not that bullies haven't been around, but you know it's like road rage or anything else. When you get behind something that insulates you and can take away the I guess responsibility or accountability for your actions, which social media some platforms do that better than others. You know there is that very real risk, and and while that the guy that went after Leslie you know got what was coming to him. You know I've heard other people that have said well. You know, at least he was using his real name, and at least he was standing behind what, what he was saying. And there's so many others that you have no idea who they are. They're obfuscating their IP addresses with BitTorrent and other sorts of tools that are just hiding in the weeds. And when you squish one, another one pops up. So not to justify his actions by any means, but the anonymity that is created thanks to the technology that we've been given is, is I think one of the areas that The networks are going to have to figure out how to take care of and eliminate this, or at least help mitigate it. So we'll see what evolves. It'll be interesting to watch how this kind of plays out now that it's starting to become a little bit more commonplace. So good. Well, that concludes this week's show. Again, as a reminder, we will not be meeting next week. The show is going to be canceled, and I will. again be hopefully on my mountain bike on a trail somewhere enjoying the joys of Pennsylvania. So wish me well, and we will look forward to seeing you the following week, and maybe online and in other areas. But as Deborah said, let's all just try to be nice to one another and help not, I guess, support this whole cyberbullying thing. Bad, bad, bad, bad. So anyway, that wraps this week's show. We'll, uh, we'll see you next week— or not next week, but, uh, on the next show. And until then, have a good one. Bye everybody.

Bye-bye.