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Comment by sillysaurus2 | Hacker News Reader

In high school there were a number of bullies I would've gotten revenge on by trashing their names with social media. I wonder if it could be made a crime? It may not be possible to criminalize it, since it's usually accidental rather than purposeful. Therefore social media seems a dubious metric under any circumstances.

And yet it works quite well for YC to filter out potential applicants. So there are some circumstances in which social media provides signal.

Maybe making it impossible for someone to forge your identity is the way forward. It's certainly an uncomfortable thought that all future children will be judged by what they say as young teenagers, though. But maybe it's inevitable.

They'll just have to mature more quickly. Adolescence is an artificial invention anyway.

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People are also quick to jump to conclusions. Twitter/Facebook are awful mediums for expressing your thoughts within the proper context, so somebody that doesn't know you and hasn't followed you doesn't necessarily have the right context to judge you based on 200-chars messages or based on funny pictures or whatnot you end up sharing.

Therefore, at least give the guy the chance to explain those posts.

> I wonder if it could be made a crime?

Unjustifiably trashing people's names is already a recognized offense, it is called "slander" or "libel", depending on whether it is spoken or written.

There are two defenses to this, one that the comments were 'fair comment", i.e. not malicious falsehoods, and the other is "freedom of speech". These defenses are variously successful in different jurisdictions.

In the UK, for example, it is very hard to defend yourself from an accusation of libel, since you have to prove that what you said was factually correct, which is of course easy if that is the case, and you have proof to hand. However if a good lawyer reduces your "facts" to mere hearsay, and then you are in trouble.

In the US "freedom of speech" usually trumps everything else, and you rarely get into trouble for lying about another person.

A lawyer once told me that to win a libel/slander case, you needed to show:

1. that the statements made were false

2. that the person making them had malicious intent (i.e. they knew the statements were false and weren't simply joking)

3. some demonstrable harm

I.e. saying "Fred is a jerk" isn't slander, because that's a statement of opinion, not a fact. Saying "Fred is a thief and a drunk" is a statement of fact.

Defamation laws vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction; the advice your lawyer gave in your situation is not necessarily applicable to all situations. Some jurisdictions have allowed the common law (which itself is particular to jurisdictions and so can evolve in different directions in different places) to govern it, others have legislation, still others have a mix of the two.

In particular, truth is usually a complete defence to defamation, but not always. Sometimes it is only a partial defence and sometimes it is not a defence at all.

> And yet it works quite well for YC to filter out potential applicants.

How so?

I can't find the original announcement of Startup News right now, but one of the reasons this site was set up was to gather intel on potential applicants. Your comments tell them a lot about your character, which they use in decisions about whether to accept applicants or not. HN is "social media," so that's an example of the effect we were talking about.

Deliberately impersonating someone with the intention of damaging their reputation may fall afoul of some slander/libel laws.

I highly suspect that impersonating someone online fall foul of the CFAA.

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