The responsibility is not Facebook's, but rather the news organizations that reported early rumors and reports as facts. IANAL, but i would expect that they potentially face libel suits for defamation of character.

In this situation, Facebook is merely a modern day phone book (albeit vastly more robust and complex). It is the news organization that bears the responsibility of gathering, checking and publishing verified facts. That's called reporting.

Hi all,

Ryan's roommate here, longtime HN lurker.

It would have been nice if FB locked down his profile a little sooner, for sure. I imagine we're going to be dealing with this shit for a while to come now.

If you wouldn't mind, can you help us get the hashtag #ApologizeToRyan off the ground? Maybe social media can be used to restore his good name, too.

Internet Lynch Mobs: JUST SAY NO

Sorry to be simplistic, but that rule is the best. If you think you need to pile on someone, don't.

Our primal lizard brains just love to stomp the shit out of someone, so when society gives us signals that it's okay, we love to do it. We must resist this urge before Piggy's head get crushed by a boulder.

Every time something like this happens people react in quite predictable ways, the creation of Facebook pages is one of the more common ones. Why do people do this? Does it come from social pressure to show just how angry they are with actions, is it just how people cope with terrible news (by doing something even if it's ultimately futile) or is it just another case of humans doing irrational things? My google-fu isn't very good so no results of relevance are coming up, but it seems like there must be a reason behind these reactions.

This is why Dutch publishers are prohibited to publish last names of suspects (even after conviction). In this case it would be abbreviated to "Adam L.". They even protect the identities of the most notorious killers and terrorists (Volkert van der G., Karst T., Samir A.). The US should do the same, solves a lot of problems outlined in this article.

I wonder what (if any) legal recourse Ryan Lanza might have against the news agencies that libeled his name. I imagine it really depends on the exact wording used, but Ryan could have a great defamation/emotional distress case on his hands, when everything settles.

This is not Facebook's responsibility. This is everybody's responsibility not to be an idiot. Unfortunately, too many people fail at this responsibility. But enabling them by saying "it's the press" or "it's the Facebook", not "it is you - personally you - being an idiot by believing unchecked information" is not helping either. When "the nation" - or, more precisely, a bunch of very foolish people - seek to lynch someone, they should be told "you are fools. Not go home and think about it", not "is Facebook to blame for it? Is Reuters? Can we find anybody - preferably big faceless corporation - to take the blame?"

Maybe the edge case of being misidentified as your brother, the mass murderer, is not one that Facebook needs to spend any time solving.

And perhaps, despite some of the comments in this thread, strong traditions and protections for free speech are broadly valuable, and it wouldn't make sense for there to be litigious or legislative remedies that weaken them.

And if we're going to waste time worrying about people expressing their "hate" on Facebook, perhaps we could also solve the problem of pandodaily linkbaiting a "tech" article out of a national tragedy involving the slaughter of children.

If these social networks wished to discourage such behavior, they could create a "most popular comment" feature that pinned something you said publicly and in the last few months in your public profile, then quietly tweak their algorithms to prefer public lynch-mob dickishness or other bad behavior to this spot.

"...should Facebook be more proactive in removing (at least provisionally) hate groups like the ones listed above? Okay, before you start crying foul about free speech and the 1st amendment..."

Is there some Facebook Constitution I'm not aware of? What duty does Facebook have to uphold the first amendment?

Seems Adam Lanza, Ryan Lanza's brother is the suspect and that his mom, a teacher was killed in the shootout as well. http://gawker.com/5968551/ryan-lanza-is-a-cold-blooded-murde...

>(Gawker also changed its story, but proof of the original headline is still in the URL)

You can put anything in the URL you like, as long as the number matches and it passes whatever regular expression gawker runs on those URLs, it will point to the right news story. Hardly conclusive proof that gawker changed the headline when someone can do something like http://gawker.com/5968551/ryan-lanza-is-a-cold-blooded-murde... and the URL bar doesn't even change to reflect the original title.

Facebook have a responsibility, insofar as privacy is concerned: users are now forced to be included in searches; how easy is it to make your posts saying your are not the killer; how easy is it to delete your Facebook profile, as the wrongly accused brother eventually did?

What's more important is that other people like the Ryan Lanza namesakes are affected by this erosion of privacy - people who also face threats and the like.

It doesn't make them culpable, but they should know that they have a responsibility, because when people are on the look-out for someone, they are going to choose the path of least resistance to tracking them down.

For what it's worth, how should Twitter go about it, when a Ryan Lanza receives death threats from people on Twitter? What can be really complicated is figuring out how to deal with the problem; what isn't is understanding that the proprietors of the most popular social media platforms have a responsibility to their users.

I think it's examples like this that show the extreme interpretation of the US free speech law. The US doesn't protect all speech and allows some things to be banned. Cases like this should fall under nonprotected speech. The harm that can done time innocent person without any due process of a fair legal trial and with no effective ability to argue your case far outweighs the harm to a newspaper in banning them mentioning the name. You should be allowed report all the rest of the details of this horrific crime, of course, but you should not be legally allowed to identify the accused unless it was very much in the public interest (e.g. if it was a politician who did it).

Sloppy journalism, for sure ... but libel? Maybe. If so, by carrying his brother's id, the shooter may have left him a parting gift of financial security. Surely not planned ... (?)

This page has some serious issues with it's floating header in Chromium on Xubuntu 12.04 http://i.imgur.com/5Z3H6.png

They could display a warning on every goddamn person's Facebook going "No, the Adam/Ryan Lanza here is NOT the killer on the news, please leave them alone."

If you buy the argument that the Internet would be better off if everyone had their own domain names (as was recently discussed on HN), it doesn't make much sense to then take Facebook to task for not getting involved.

This is about the existence of institutions of government

We learnt a long time ago that two sides who cannot trust each other must have a third party whom they can trust to behave in a particular (fair) way all the time.

That third party becomes a mechanism for government.

Facebook cannot be trusted because Facebook has no controlling mind. Just like HN here.

Institutions cannot be crowd sourced or socially generated. They must be based on principles and be independent and incorruptible.

We give professors and judges lifetime contracts with no get out clauses - and we do it for a reason. When Facebook is public ally funded we will need it to have a controlling mind

And this yet another reason I don't have a facebook. Although, it seems the news media seems to think anyone without facebook is a psychopath as well. Lose, lose.

I think Ryan should receive a lot of money from the media. Can the media really just ruin somebody's life and not even pay a dime for it?

undefined