Abstract
Online defamation, doxing, and impersonation are three of the major problems of the internet age. As technology advances, these become greater problems. These problems can cause serious damage to victims. This research chapter makes recommendations on how to educate the public to deal with online defamation, doxing, and impersonation. It concludes by proposing a field called “misinformation identification engineering” to develop algorithms and software to find, flag, or remove misinformation and disinformation on websites and in other documents.
TopIntroduction
This research chapter focuses on combating online defamation, doxing, and impersonation (Collins, 2011; Cox, 2014; Koch, 2016; Reznik, 2013). Defamation against an individual involves the communication of false statements that harm the individual’s reputation. Doxing of an individual involves the publication of an individual’s private information such as his home address or family members. People can be impersonated for many purposes such as to harm their reputations, to gain personal information on them, to cause them to lose business, to cause them to lose friends, to write exams for them, to vote for them, to spread false information about them, etc.
In the old days, it was hard to spread false information or private information about people. It had to be done by telling people face to face, handing out flyers, putting up posters, etc. Only the mainstream media had the means to reach a lot of people. The mainstream media is generally more careful in what it says, although it has crossed the line into defamation many times too, but usually not nearly as bad as people can commit defamation on the world wide web. Now false information or private information about people can just be posted on the web using a fake name for the world to see (Banerjee & Chua, 2019; Chiluwa, 2019; Hage et al., 2020; Pal & Banerjee, 2019; Reynard, 2019; Solo, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c). Defamation, doxing, and impersonation on the web are three of the major new problems of the information age.
Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are frequently used to spread defamatory information. New software can be used to detect cyberbullying on social networks (Balakrishnan, Khan, Fernandez, & Arabnia, 2019). Fake news, which is used to spread disinformation or defamatory information, is a growing problem (Adikpo, 2019; Assay, 2019; Bradshaw & Howard, 2019; Çomlekci, 2020; Dale, 2019; Grazulis & Rogers, 2019; Guadagno & Guttieri, 2019; Mach, 2019; Ottonicar, 2020; Rezayi et al., 2018; Stengel, 2019; Watts, 2018). Fake news and defamation on the web are frequently used to attack politicians, an unethical type of network politics (Solo & Bishop, 2011, 2014, 2016, 2017). Deepfakes are videos featuring humans manipulated by computational intelligence. Deepfakes can be used to impersonate individuals while conveying disinformation or defamatory information (Parkin, 2019). The use of deepfakes to impersonate politicians while conveying misinformation is an unethical form of political engineering or computational politics (Solo, 2011, 2014, 2017, 2019d). As technology advances, more sophisticated means can be used to fool people with defamation. The laws need to be updated as recommended in this research chapter to stop the spread of defamatory information using social networks, fake news, and deepfakes too. Also, as recommended in this research chapter, people need to be better educated on how to fight online defamation, doxing, and impersonation.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Disinformation: Disinformation is false information presented as factual information. There is an intent to deceive with this false information. All disinformation is misinformation.
Cyberlibel: Cyberlibel involves the online communication of one or more false statements that harm an individual’s reputation. The cyberlibel can be communicated by email, a bulletin board, an online chat, an article, a message board, a forum, a blog, a social network, another website, text messaging, etc.
Doxing: Doxing of an individual involves the publication of an individual’s private information such as his home address or family members.
Misinformation: Misinformation is false information presented as factual information. There may or may not be an intent to deceive with this false information.
Misinformation Identification Engineering: Misinformation identification engineering is a term coined by Ashu M. G. Solo for a new field to develop algorithms and software to find, flag, or remove misinformation and disinformation on websites and in other documents.
Cyberbullying: Cyberbullying includes online defamation, doxing, impersonation, threats of violence, mocking, etc. This can occur by email, a bulletin board, an online chat, an article, a message board, a forum, a blog, a social network, another website, text messaging, etc.
Defamation: Defamation against an individual involves the communication of one or more false statements that harm the individual’s reputation.
Impersonation: Impersonation of an individual involves pretending to be that individual. This can be done to harm their reputations, to gain personal information on them, to cause them to lose business, to cause them to lose friends, to write exams for them, to vote for them, to spread false information about them, etc.
Fake News: Fake news includes misinformation or disinformation presented as news. The fake news can be presented by a website, newspaper, magazine, radio station, television station, etc.
Deepfakes: Deepfakes are videos featuring humans manipulated by computational intelligence. Deepfakes can be used to impersonate individuals while conveying disinformation or defamatory information.