http://www.washingto...7030602705.html
She graduated Phi Beta Kappa, has published in top legal journals and completed internships at leading institutions in her field. So when the Yale law student interviewed with 16 firms for a job this summer, she was concerned that she had only four call-backs. She was stunned when she had zero offers.
Though it is difficult to prove a direct link, the woman thinks she is a victim of a new form of reputation-maligning: online postings with offensive content and personal attacks that can be stored forever and are easily accessible through a Google search.
The woman and two others interviewed by The Washington Post learned from friends that they were the subject of derogatory chats on a widely read message board on AutoAdmit, run by a third-year law student at the University of Pennsylvania and a 23-year-old insurance agent. The women spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution online.
The article goes on to say the following about the message board:
...there are also hundreds of chats posted by anonymous users that feature derisive statements about women, gays, blacks, Asians and Jews. In scores of messages, the users disparage individuals by name or other personally identifying information. Some of the messages included false claims about sexual activity and diseases. To the targets' dismay, the comments bubble up through the Internet into the public domain via Google's powerful search engine.
The owners of the board refuse to remove any of the offending comments, in part because they believe that it's a violation of free speech to censor the postings in any way. What about the rights of the people who have had their reputations damaged or destroyed by these postings, many of which appear to be baseless or entirely false? And do employers bear some responsibility for giving credit to posts such as these? If people who post slanderous statements are given credit for what they post, doesn't it just encourage them to continue?
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