Virginia teen sexting case: (Somewhat) reduced injustice

By Anne Collier It was a picture-perfect example of how a law intended to protect children can be used to victimize them. But the juvenile judge didn’t comment on the perversion of justice – or the prosecution’s victimization of a teenager by ordering...

'Revenge porn': Exposing cruel disclosure

By Anne Collier This is a sidebar to my earlier post about social norms as one of the solutions to social cruelty online, zooming in on one form of it. “Revenge porn” needs to be understood and exposed for what it is so it can be neutralized. Its power to...

Zooming in on social norms (sidebar)

By Anne Collier This is a sidebar to my earlier post about social norms as one of the solutions to social cruelty online. Social norms are practically super powers. As I mentioned in my main post, this doesn’t occur to us much because, well, these are norms,...

Textbook case of what NOT to do in teen sexting cases

By Anne Collier The Washington Post has done some important reporting on a teen sexting case in Virginia, spotlighting what could (should) go down in history as a textbook example of how police can abuse rather than enforce child pornography law in the digital age. A...

The 'real world' is a lot more dangerous than cyberspace

This post first appeared on Forbes.com The media is full of horror stories about online dangers, but — in all but a few categories — offline risk dwarfs its online equivalent. Stranger danger vs. trusted adults Let’s start with children. Every parent worries about...