Blogs are sometimes used by people who want to express their frustrations under anonymity. This attitude can be caused by fear to express feelings outwardly or by incapacity to express those frustrations openly if, for example, an employee wants to complain about his job or a student about his school. People can post comments on blogs, and they too have the freedom to hide their true identity when posting comments.
Although comments are usually directed at the ideas in the blogger’s post, some are random and may contain insults, attacks directed at the author and even threats. When the blog belongs to a celebrity or public figure, this type of comments is bound to surface and dominate.
Recently, 36-year-old Canadian model Liskula Cohen was subjected to negative comments posted on a blog, hosted on Google’s free publishing service, Blogger. The author posted rude remarks, some of the less shocking including calling the model “our #1 skanky superstar”. The model was enraged at the anonymous author’s behavior, who started a blog called “Skanks in NYC”. The blog is dedicated to ridiculing the Canadian model, by methods which include mocking photographs of Cohen. All the posts were published in one day, August 21st, 2008.
Cohen was very offended by the incident, and has decided to sue Google to coerce them into revealing the identity of the anonymous blogger. It remains to be seen whether Google, who does indeed have a policy to release information under subpoenas, will give Cohen the coveted information.
