Wild West 2.0: How to Protect and Restore Your Online Reputation on the Untamed Social Frontier

44

The Forces Driving

Online Reputation

The Internet has turned reputation on its head. What was once

private is now public. What was once local is now global. What was

once fleeting is now permanent. And what was once trustworthy is

now unreliable. These changes are explained by the way that the

technology of the Internet has shaped the people’s interaction with it.

Understanding the unique relationship between technology and

culture online is key to understanding how to manage your reputa-

tion online. Failure is certain for users who apply offline techniques

to their Internet reputation or who use offline assumptions when

dealing with online problems. Instead, savvy users must understand

the technical and cultural differences between the Internet and the

offline world in order to effectively preserve and improve their repu-

tations online.

CHAPTER

45The Forces Driving Online Reputation

A Brave New World for Reputation

The Internet is not like other forms of communication. The Inter-

net is not a phone, a radio, a TV, a newspaper, a magazine, a bill-

board, or a bathroom wall. It is entirely unique: it is simultaneously

the largest soapbox in the history of soapbox speeches, the largest

library of human knowledge ever created, the biggest party line

chat in the history of conversation, and much more. Unlike any

medium that has come before it, it offers powerful, global, instant,

interactive communication equally to everyone, no matter how

young or old, no matter where in the world they are located, and no

matter what they have to say. Everyone can broadcast, and everyone

can listen.

Thanks to the Internet, we now have more power over one an-

other’s reputations than at any point in history. Average everyday

citizens have the power to create or destroy almost anybody’s good

name. But, fortunately, the Internet has also given people the

power to monitor, manage, and improve their own reputation, in a

way never before seen. Understanding the technical nature of the

Internet is the first step toward monitoring and managing your on-

line reputation. The technology of the Internet is dramatically dif-

ferent from the offline world: it allows anyone to publish anything

instantly and globally, it is easily searched, search engines don’t

know or care if something is true so long as it is popular, nearly

everything online is permanent, and disparate audiences are

thrown together in a way that doesn’t often happen in the real

world.

Leading scholar Daniel Solove’s groundbreaking book The Future

of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet goes into

great depth explaining the massive impact of this digital revolution

on personal reputation. He examines both the digital causes, many of

which are discussed in this chapter, and legal and social factors that

can help mitigate the destructive impact of these changes.

46 Wild West 2.0

Everyone Can Create, and

Everyone Is (Almost) Equal

Everywhere you look on the Internet, you can find content written by

other everyday people like yourself. The industry calls this “user-created

content,” and it appears to be the future of the Internet. In the early

days, much Internet content was written by professional journalists and

large corporations. This “top-down” model of publishing featured a few

trusted content creators who spread their message to many readers.

Today, user-created content is king. Profit-oriented websites like

Facebook and Reddit have discovered that it is cheaper to let users

create their own content than it is to pay writers and editors to write

and edit it. As a result, countless “Web 2.0” sites rely on users to cre-

ate the content that other users will view. These sites range from blog-

ging sites like LiveJournal and Blogger, to online encyclopedias like

Wikipedia, to news aggregation sites like Digg, to short-message sites

like Twitter (used for content as banal as “I’m eating a cheeseburger”

and as meaningful as political commentary in 140 characters or less).

Everyone Can Create

The result of the Web 2.0 revolution is that everyday people now can

create online content that can be viewed by millions of people. It is

possible for anyone to set up a free online journal or blog with just a

few clicks. An online journal can hold any kind of information, rang-

ing from family photos to political thoughts to gossip and scandal. It

is entirely up to the creator to decide what to write on the blank slate

he or she is given. This immense power is given to anyone, and it is

up to the user to decide whether to use this newfound power for

good or for evil.

Similarly, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of sites that fo-

cus on discussion and chat. These “forums” and “bulletin boards” usu-

ally allow users to read messages left by others and to post their own

thoughts in response. Often, discussion sites are organized around a

larger theme (like a particular sports team), and allow users to create