My name is David Benjamin and I approve this message

My name is David Benjamin and I approve this message
by David Benjamin

“Posting a malicious rumor on Facebook, or writing a false news story that is indexed by Google, is a nearly instantaneous process. Removing such posts require human intervention. This imbalance gives an advantage to rulebreakers.”
— Kevin Roose, “The Shift,” New York Times

MADISON, Wis. — The first “news” from the bloodbath in Vegas was all fake. Reports that popped up almost instantly on 4Chan, Reddit, InfoWars and other organs of the wingnut fringe identified Stephen Paddock as an “anti-Trump liberal,” a recent convert to Islam and a soldier of ISIS. All not true. Nevertheless, these fictions vaulted to status as “top stories” on Google’s newsfeed. A “trending” Facebook story about Paddock, also fake, was traced back to the Russian hack-factory, Sputnik.

Some of these fantasies had bylines. Most were phony. The majority were anonymous and untraceable. Reputable sources like CBS, CNN and the Las Vegas Review-Journal eventually corrected all this crapola. But the suckers who swallow the instant lies and distortions of Breitbart World never saw the revised story. They stopped reading long before the Washington Post and Associated Press filed their first dispatch. Right now, they’re sharing scare stories about Paddock as the fall guy in a plot by Hillary Clinton and Gabby Giffords to repeal the Second Amendment and rip every gun in America from the cold, dead hands of Charlton Heston.

Two-thirds of Americans get all their “news” from social media like Facebook, Google and Twitter — which is like getting all your nourishment from vending machines. None of these platforms employs a single professional journalist. None makes any effort to determine the source of the information hodge-podge that they pass through to the public. Social media use algorithms — whose secrecy they guard fanatically — to select and classify news items. This garbage-in garbage-out process goes untouched by human hands.

As noted in the New York Times, Facebook “previously had a team of trained news editors who chose which stories appeared in its trending topics section, a huge driver of traffic to news stories. But it disbanded the group and instituted an automatic process… after reports surfaced that the editors were suppressing conservative news sites.”

(Please note here that “conservative news” is an oxymoron.)

Facebook understands that to maximize “traffic,” you minimize accountability. Twitter boasts that no one who tweets is required to reveal his or her true identity. A) Ring the doorbell. B) Run like hell.

The nameless Twitter twits and Facebook imposters who take out their personal pathologies on the Internet are commonly referred to as “trolls.” My childhood reading taught me that a troll is a monster who hides under the bridge, slobbers a lot and eats anyone who tries to cross.

There were trolls under the bridges, tormenting the press, long before the Web came along. I spent the better part of a decade, as editor of a weekly newspaper in Massachusetts, dealing with local folks who bordered on trollhood. They wrote vituperative letters and demanded that I publish them, but, “Please, leave my name off.” They yearned to be heard, but trembled at the consequences.

My favorite troll was Elwyn Atherton.

Elwyn once mailed to my office an elegantly crafted postcard, complete with illustrations and literate insults, about me — personally. Elwyn depicted me as somewhat less astute than a lobotomized chicken. His language was uncomplimentary but entirely suitable for mixed company. I wanted to print — without retort — his scurrilous little haiga. But I couldn’t.

Elwyn hadn’t signed it. Without attribution, I wasn’t sure, for months, if Elwyn was my author. Fortunately, Elwyn had manic episodes, during which he wrote letters at a feverish pace and also dropped by my offie to harangue me in person. By and by, Elwyn’s style became pretty obvious.

And that’s what I told him. I interrupted one of his monologs and said, “Elwyn, you’ve got style! I mean, you’re obviously crazier than an outhouse woodchuck, but damn, you’re fun to read. I’d love to print your letters.”

Elwyn was reluctant. Like most of my anonymous epistiers, Elwyn was afraid to expose himself to the physical retaliation or verbal abuse that might result when the masses read his malevolent missives.

I scoffed. “Elwyn, no one in the history of the Mansfield News ever got beat up for writing a letter to the editor.” As for verbal abuse, I said, “Elwyn, your letters are a barrage of verbal abuse. You’re good at it. You’re a born entertainer. But if you’re going to dish it out, you gotta be ready to take it.”

“Besides,” I said, “sticks and stones.”

Eventually, Elwyn — bless his heart — agreed to sign. The whole town partook of his articulate lunacy, and no one ever laid a hand on him.

In roughly 400 issues of the News, I never published an unsigned letter. As a one-man weekly in a one-horse town, I wrote virtually all the copy, from straight stories, features and editorials to sports, commentary and even theater reviews. I explained to Elwyn that while I took no byline on routine stories (as a matter of modesty), I made sure that my name appeared on any prose I was proud of or — more important — might get me into trouble.

I wanted people to know who was responsible. I used to wear a t-shirt around town that read — on the front — “I’M RESPONSIBLE.”

I persist in believing that we all want to know who’s really responsible. That’s why politicians who buy self-promos on TV have to say, “I’m Batson D. Belfry and I approve this message.”

I know, unfortunately, that stripping anonymity from the outbursts on Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Reddit and all the other Internet megaphones will not protect us from their lies, slanders, fake news, fraudmongers, unadulterated bullshit and Vladimir Putin. Making people “sign” will likely reduce Web traffic (good for you and me, bad for Zuckerberg). Serious trolls, of course, will swiftly find ways to beat the system and hide out amongst the ones and zeroes.

But if everyone were required — either by law or by the Revised Rules of the Web — to sign his or her real name to his or her every tweet, blog, blurb, flame, baby photo, cat video and cri de coeur, we might observe the emergence of a kinder, gentler and more credible Internet.

Without an alias to hide behind, some tweeters might be less inclined to blurt without thinking (or spelling). There might be fewer trolls spewing insults, fewer mean girls trashing their classmates. Bigots, forced to drop their robes, might choose to trundle their hatred back under the bridge.

Do I wonder if the ACLU will approve? Do I worry that this sort of “regulation” will stifle public discourse? Is it possible that Web-surfers will feel less free to say how they feel at the very instant that they feel it, regardless of what they actually know?

I sure hope so. As I said once long ago: “If you’re not willing to stand up for what you believe, Elwyn, please. Shut up.”