For years, Twitter has been terrorized by the ponderous musings of a person pretending to be a fridge in the offices of The New York Times. When will we learn its identity?
The anxious cyborgs who rule Google have decreed, after much controversy and deliberation, that they will alllow people to register accounts that do not match their official hu-man names. All you need to do to obtain a pseudonym is to furnish a printed "offline" news article, government document, popular Twitter account and three (3) types of bodily fluid.
Google's social network is on a rampage. It's banning people for using nicknames. It' s banning people for names that are too short. It's banning people for names that are too long. It's even banning people for having the wrong names.
Upon finding out that the woman accusing former IMF chief Dominique Strauss Kahn of rape lied to a grand jury about the events following her alleged assault, the New York Post surely realized that such a complicated case required cautious, nuanced coverage. Like, say, today's front-page article: "DSK MAID A HOOKER."
When the owner of a Beverly Hills eatery spotted the L.A. Times restaurant critic in his lobby, he refused her service and took her picture, making her identity publicly available for the first time. Kiss anonymity goodbye, S. Irene Virbila.
A judge in Cuyahoga County, Ohio is suing the local paper, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, for disclosing that certain comments on its website came from her email address. The paper says it had no choice. Does privacy trump news?
A British court has ruled that the Times of London is free to unmask an anonymous British blogger, just ten days after the National Review caused and uproar by outing a left-wing blogger named Publius. This is a good thing.
"I've seen blogs where if you don't have your name on [a comment], they won't run your answer. I respect those blogs, and the people who run those blogs have a great deal of integrity," said blog-hating ad agency exec Nina DiSesa in an interview we posted earlier today. Among those cowardly bloggers who provide a platform for totally anonymous comments: Nina DiSesa!
Another great moment in newspaper subject anonymity descriptors: "'It's very clear that people are taking nicer vacations,' said one Google engineer, who asked not to be identified because it is also not Googley to talk about personal fortunes made at the company." Heh. (Also! The Google massage gal retired a multimillionaire! Go on: Slap yourself. [NYT]
