Dating sites – you ain’t gonna like this…

ByLaurel Papworth

not one little bit. Nope. You’re not going to like this one. A week ago, Jason Fortuny (RFJason) (livejournal blog here and empty website here) and his friend took an ad by a female – a fairly hardcore sex ad – and posted it to Craigslist. The ad was supposed to be by a woman…

not one little bit. Nope. You’re not going to like this one.

A week ago, Jason Fortuny (RFJason) (livejournal blog here and empty website here) and his friend took an ad by a female – a fairly hardcore sex ad – and posted it to Craigslist. The ad was supposed to be by a woman looking for bondage action and the foto she submitted wasn’t of her face. Try lower.

On September 4, he posted to the internet all 178 of the responses, complete with photographs and personal contact details, encouraging others to further identify participants. [2] Although some online exposures of personal information have been seen as justified as exposing malfeasance, many commentators on the Fortuny case saw no such justification here. “The men who replied to Fortuny’s posting did not appear to be doing anything illegal, so the outing has no social value other than to prove that someone could ruin lives online”, said law professor Jonathan Zittrain, while Wired writer Ryan Singel described Fortuny as “sociopathic”.[3] (from wiki)

So it appeared to these guys that a woman was posting a request for a ‘hot date’ and they responded. The fotos they sent were also not of their faces, but seriously who cares between consenting adults?

Fortuny himself is unapologetic, writing to internet raconteur Tucker Max, “Let’s milk this. All the way. […] There must be a way to combine this. Into money. Money is important. Money is good.”[4] A thread on Tucker Max’s message board that contained the content of the e-mail and related discussion was deleted shortly thereafter. [5] The story was also covered on television news reports, first on MSNBC‘s news network.[6][7] (from wiki again)

If you are over 18, there’s a full details at Encylopedia Dramatica. Including fotos, and responses and audio responses. If you are not over 18 and I catch you reading it, I’ll put you in the naughty corner. Don’t you roll your eyes at me!

Where was I? Oh yes, Craigslist is in trouble with this one. They need to move fast. Rule number one for posting – make sure its in the ToS and T&Cs and FAQs – DO NOT POST PERSONAL INFORMATION ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE. Make sure your mods (or at least your admins if you are using community moderators) have access to not only the IP address of the disrupter but also his/her MAC address. Publish in your community that you know who it is, and what you are doing about it. That’ll stop copycats. Or not. There’s always the self-destructive ones who are looking for fame and glory. Remove any copycat posts ASAP. Hmm what else…? I’ve had situations where a community member has posted personal information about a moderator (tracked the URL of a foto posted), then rang his home and office abusing the boss and others in his name. When personal disputes spill over from forums into In Real Life situations, be ready. BTW, post that you know who it is, but don’t say who it is. Death threats and violence propagates itself.

Since then Jason has had *his* private info published to CL and been threatened physically, threatened with lawsuits, and has been hated on by everyone from online BDSM communities to Wired (and I saw he was interviewed by the NY Times on friday Sept. 8, so I wonder what position they’ll take on all of this).

Well, we’ve had the emails that get sent to the world, and published in newspapers, it was only a matter of time before these type of distasteful *jokes* take place.

Thanks to Jim Benson for alerting me to it.

In a nutshell Jason did the following:
1. Steal a sexually explicit ad from another city
2. Post it on the Seattle CraigsList
3. Proceed to publish every response complete with photos and names an addresses of the responders.

BoingBoing also covered it. Any copycats on RSVP.com.au yet???? Just checkin’. Oh and is this any different than the Paris Hilton/Pammy Anderson fiascos? Or does it mean more when its normal, everyday people who’s privacy is being invaded?

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3 Comments

  1. Yeah. What to say hey? I mean really. It’s only my fervent belief in Karma that prevents me from working myself up into a lather over an incident like this. This guy just doesn’t “get it”. If he was Australian he’d be a young liberal (my way of saying someone who recognises or understands a system enough to exploit it, without having any real understanding of the implications of what they are doing).

  2. There’s something about that guy that reminds me of a trader (stock) in Victoria. I forget his name, starts with M I think, who writes to old people and offers them a low price for their shares. Amazingly they get confused, don’t check the real price and sell to him. It’s not illegal but it just plain sucks.

    On the ‘net, TRUST is more powerful than MONEY. Given that money was originally a way of trusting another person, and establishing a common value, we’re back to square one.

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