People tell lies on your online community. They tell lies to get around your policies. They tell white lies that probably don’t hurt anyone. And then they tell lies that can.
Katie Baker, a contributor over at Gawker Media sports blog Deadspin, recently penned a fascinating piece on her experience using hockey-themed Usenet groups as a teenage girl in the late 90s. The title? “The Confessions Of A Former Adolescent Puck Tease: I Was Teenage Hockey Message Board Jailbait.” You had me at message board.
Baker has an interesting background. As a pre-teen, she participated in Apple’s eWorld community, which closed on March 31, 1996. But, some former Apple employees got together and launched Talk City. Baker moved to the site and, eventually, they hired her as a chat room moderator. She was even featured in a BusinessWeek article about the company.
She eventually moved from IRC chat rooms to Usenet newsgroups and, as a sports fan, jumped into some related sections – mostly targeted at hockey. At some point, she began to lie. It began with her adding two years to her age – from 15 to 17 – but lies piled on top of lies until she needed a system of documentation to remember all of the details of her fictional life. Eventually, it all comes crashing down.
Yes, people will lie on your online community. What can you do about it? Very little, or nothing.
In the realm of “very little,” you should do what you can to develop an environment where honesty is encouraged and where people are not ridiculed for holding a reasonable, if different, opinion. You can also set the example by being honest yourself, and ensuring that your staff is honest, in public and when dealing with members.
But, you can’t control people and you can’t verify many of the things people will say on your forums, especially when it comes to personal details that a member is sharing about themselves. Often times, these lies don’t end up hurting anyone. Sometimes they do.
That is nothing new. People have been lying about personal details long before the internet existed. And so, they lie on the internet, as well. There is nothing you can do to stop it. If, by some chance, a member is caught in a lie, you can definitely take it up with them, but your impact will certainly be limited.
One area of frustration for community managers is when kids lie to circumvent COPPA, The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998. To be brief, COPPA is an internationally enforceable act that requires websites to receive permission from a parent or guardian before collecting personal information from children 12 or younger that live in the United States or its territories (and U.S.-based websites must do so when collecting information from children 12 or younger, regardless of where they live)...
Most websites that are COPPA complaint tie it in to a form where people will give them information, such as their e-mail address and location. For example, a registration form. They will usually ask the member to specify their age, date of birth or to certify that they were born before a certain date.
Of course, this relies on honesty. And not everyone is honest. Some kids just want to get in and post and it’s easy enough to lie, so why not? The problem: the act was designed to protect them and, potentially, a website owner can get in serious trouble if they knowingly collect information from pre-teens without consent from a parent or legal guardian.
What can you do? Again, very little. The only thing you can do – and can be expected to do – is to act as soon as you find out that someone has lied to circumvent your COPPA compliant registration system. If they let their age slip in a post (I’ve had this happen before), you should deactivate their account immediately and, if you want, send them an e-mail with your COPPA form, for their parent or guardian.
As you can see, the main thing you can do with lies is react once they are made clear. Otherwise, people are free willed and some will lie. You can’t stress about it or regard everyone in the world as a liar. Take what people say at face value and try to give them the benefit of the doubt, until they give you a reason not to.
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