So a few days have passed now since I revealed the “anonymous compliance officer” behind The Bylaw Blog, which prompted the author to shut down his site, which made me The Asshole of The Internet. And after absorbing the commentary on this issue, it seems that some more context about this whole mess is in order. You’ll probably still think I’m an asshole after reading it, which is fine.
Right off the top – it wasn’t my intent or my expectation that the author would shut down once he was revealed. Had I believed that would be the case, I would not have published his identity. I hate that he decided he needed to shut down, and I’m sorry I was the cause of that. Everybody who’s mentioned it is right – it’s a valuable resource that’s gone now, prompted by my post.
The biggest question, obviously, is why did I publish his name? There are a few layers to it, so I’ll try to break it down.
- With the spate of NCAA campus visits, questions about a party in Miami, etc. The Bylaw Blog had become very newsworthy. And the source of information being quoted so widely is relevant, especially since the source was purporting to be involved in Division I compliance. It matters whether the author is the head of compliance at Texas or an assistant at a school that doesn’t field a football team and isn’t a significant player in basketball (anymore). Turned out it was the latter. Yes, he’s largely doing legal analysis on NCAA rules, but the context of his employment matters. In hindsight, I should have simply given the context of where the writer is employed and not revealed his name or institution. Had I believed he would quit once his identity was public, that’s what I would have done.
- He wrote of the “black box” nature of NCAA compliance. And the recent events surrounding the Miami party and subsequent questioning of all manner of football stars as to their whereabouts that weekend smacked of a NCAA witch hunt; showboating and a ridiculous atmosphere where enforcement only comes from finding Tweets (or reading about Reggie Bush at Yahoo Sports). That the one person writing about the NCAA workings hid in anonymity bothered me. I stupidly believed that revealing the author might lead to opening the information up by bringing it out of the shadows. Clearly I was very wrong about that.
- As somebody interested in Internet culture, technology and the like, it was significant to me that this author believed himself to be anonymous when he was anything but. At its base level, publishing his name was a demonstration that anonymity is elusive. The fallout demonstrates that depending on anonymity is a perilous thing.
Agree or disagree, those were my reasons for publishing his name. And, as I’ll say over and over, I did not intent or expect him to shut down because of it. And I’m sorry my revelation resulted in that.
Probably the most frequently lobbed criticism is that I should have known publishing his name would lead to the blog’s demise. I disagree strongly with that. I carefully read what he wrote about his anonymity and disclaiming his opinions as his own; not representing the NCAA or any institution. He did not say the end of anonymity means the end of the blog. He said he would “attempt anonymity as long as the Internet allows.” He holds a law degree, so it’s reasonable to believe he chooses his words carefully. Apparently he does not. Once again, had I believed his loss of anonymity would have led to him shutting down the site, I would not have published his name.
Now, there’s something important to note about the fallout here. This isn’t to pick on The Bylaw Blog’s author, but rather to illustrate my third point above.
Upon the revelation of his name and employer, the blog’s author immediately shut down and (if commenters are to be believed), his future employment and reputation are in jeopardy. It’s really unwise to stake your entire career on the veil of Internet anonymity – if that’s what actually happened here. It rarely exists, and in this case it barely existed. I figured it out in a half-hour. If what he wrote bothered the NCAA, they’ve very likely known who he is for quite a while.
And clearly he was concerned when his name came out. He discovered my post looking at his link logs (ENSBSN is a brand-new domain and likely wasn’t even indexed at Google then), wrote his good-bye post and shut it down. It was shocking how quickly he went from seeing his name on a nothing blog to closing up shop. But he did confirm his identity on his own blog rather than quietly shutting down. Maybe closing things down is short-term prudence until he sees whether and how he might operate as a known person. Since he disclaimed his opinions as his own and not representative of the NCAA or his employer, it seems like it’s doable for him to continue without anonymity.
That’s the big-picture stuff about this whole incident. Some miscellaneous things to clear up from charges that have been lobbed at me:
- I did not shut down the bylaw blog, which is an idea thrown around by a lot of people. I don’t yield that kind of power. The blog’s author decided to shut it down because I published his name. He also, apparently, decided to rely completely on anonymity while failing to come close to achieving it.
- I don’t attempt or claim anonymity; thus I am not a hypocrite. This charge was leveled today by Team Speed Kills. I write under an assumed name – kind of like how somebody might call themselves “cocknfire” to write a blog – but the site is registered under my own name and I make no effort to hide who I am.
- I’m not some asshole guy who would destroy somebody for my own gain. It should be clear by now that my intent was never to have The Bylaw Blog shut down, so that part of this charge just doesn’t apply. As for writing this for my own gain; sure. I’ve never been one to parrot back links and produce unoriginal work. For whatever “gain” is to be had from writing an insignificant blog about LSU football, that’s what I’m after.
- Quite a number of people like to call me unoriginal and a “hack” because the name of this site is a takeoff of Every Day Should Be Saturday. I’ll leave you to understand why it’s called that if you care. But it was a purposeful twist; an homage; a tribute. The folks are EBSBS have been informed that if they take issue with it, I’m happy to change the brand to something else.
So there’s your deeper context as to the purpose and expectations of my original post, as well as some thoughts on the resulting fallout. I’m well aware that many of you believe I’m an asshole, a douche, a hack, etc., so comments here are open, but moderated. Have something meaningful to contribute? Post it. Update: With the passage of time comes conclusion. With meaningful comments no longer coming in, I’m closing them down on this post so they may be freed elsewhere.
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Unfortunately, your original post did not contain a single drop of the rationalization with which you now regale the internet. The conclusion, then, is that it’s ill-conceived nonsense that you’ve concocted in order to make yourself less of a pariah. You want to make a point about anonymity on the internet? You could have made it – in your post. You didn’t. You wanted free lunch.
You’re absolutely right about that, and I should have mentioned that as a big failing of mine. I should have anticipated that the post could have had a lot more significance than I expected it to. I posted it after seeing yet another reference back to his stuff as a source, and in my head I’d been thinking about these things since I’d started seeing his posts popping up in things I read. But I failed pretty badly in pushing that out without context.
And I get what it looks like saying it in hindsight. I don’t expect everybody to all of a sudden feel good about it or even believe me, but it is what it is.
You know what would have sent him a very strong message about Internet anonymity? An e-mail that said, “Hey, you think you’re anonymous, but I found you, so obviously you aren’t.” Instead, you taught him a very important lesson about seat belts by t-boning his car. Regardless of your intentions, this entire mess could have been avoided if you’d contacted him first. That you chose instead to go public with your super-special-secretive-secret says something about your character, and I don’t really know what that is, so I’ll just make stuff up in my head.
Can’t disagree with you at this point.
Just by looking at your tweets referencing this “mess”… I can see you’re clearly a class act and had only the noblest of intentions.
# @BurritoBrosShit No, no. If his career was in jeopardy if his identity became known, he’s an idiot – period. 2:50 PM Jul 23rd via Echofon in reply to BurritoBrosShit
# @worstfan Why do you believe this was “self righteousness”? In short, this was “do you really think you’re anonymous online?” 2:27 PM Jul 23rd via Echofon in reply to worstfan
# @worstfan Blame the guy who thinks he needs to be anonymous but fails to be for quitting. 2:11 PM Jul 23rd via Echofon
# @BurritoBrosShit That’s not a “motivation”, it’s a response to what you said. If the Bylaw Blog put his career in jeopardy, he’s a moron. 1:52 PM Jul 23rd via Echofon in reply to BurritoBrosShit
# @BurritoBrosShit If your career is in danger if some guy can find out who you are in 30 minutes, you’re doing something stupid. 1:46 PM Jul 23rd via Echofon in reply to BurritoBrosShit
Those replies were in context of the crap being said to me. That’s a harsh way of putting it and sort of compressed for 14o characters, but I say the same thing above in a more delicate way.
You’ve done a lot of good work on your blog, and you’ve wasted it now. I hope it was worth it.
All things, good and bad, shall pass. Some people are pissed as hell at me now, which I understand. If I add value to things I cover going forward, things will be OK.
there is no way you can possible match the value of that blog. hacks with unoriginal blogs are a dime a dozen – that shit was unrivaled in its insight
you’d do better to just shut down your own blog and do the internet a favor by not clogging the tubes with your tripe
The title of your original post is more indicative of the “thought” you gave into seriously disrupting someone else’s life. However this post is more offensive because instead of just simply saying you are sorry, you spend hundreds of words acting like you are some Woodward for taking down a blog author who gave the public good information while simultaneously trying to avoid the repercussions of doing so. Your sorry he has taken down the blog but you aren’t sorry for the reason why he did so: you felt the need to be a big man.
If you seriously can’t understand how your revealing his name could lead to MAJOR conflicts in his career, profession, and personal life, I for one won’t be turning you to for any kind of analysis of anything college football related cause you obviously don’t know what the hell you are talking about.
If the follow-up came off as defending or justifying the end (i.e. Bylaw Blog goes away), that’s not at all my intent. I was just trying to give some context to what I was trying to do and why. I’m not looking for approval, absolution or anything. And if my explanation makes some look worse upon what I did, then so be it. There wasn’t anywhere near enough context (my fault) in the original post, so I tried to add that here.
What’s the big deal? If his job was on the line, why was he writing the blog. Kind of dumb. Even so, I agree with your point about his identity being important. The Big Ten people still hate Bruce Pearl. Alabama and Phil Fulmer had a big dust up a few years ago that involved a lawsuit. Those who point out others need to be identified. No one should be allowed to hide in the shadows.
This doesn’t make you look any better. You really should just apologize.
It hadn’t become newsworthy. It had become useful. When people gives their take on a situation that they are not involved in, then they are not part of the news. If their take is interesting and informative, then they are useful.
He didn’t work for the NCAA, he worked for an institution doing a job designed to ensure that the NCAA wouldn’t come in and sanction them for breaking rules. Thus, he was not privy to the actual going-ons at the NCAA, a fact he had made very clear. Revealing his identity had no chance of changing any practice of the NCAA Investigations office and any reasonable person should have known this.
This is laughably amoral and dumb. You do not demonstrate that a practice is unsafe by being a hazard. You, and only you, wanted to have this guy’s identity revealed and implying that you were doing a public service is insulting to our intelligence.
What he wrote bothered nobody. However, when his identity was revealed, anything he wrote would strongly reflect on the LMU Compliance Department because these departments aren’t very big. As such, it would be irresponsible for them to allow him to write about this stuff publicly, because doing so could a) annoy their peers and colleagues, b) cause difficulties for the school if he should ever write something controversial, and c) could get their school in trouble if he ever wrote something that the NCAA took issue with. It’s all well and good when nobody knows who writes a benign blog, but once his identity was revealed, it would be irresponsible to continue it for fear of future problems, rather than anything in the past.
Also, I agree that it is unwise to write a blog anonymously if losing anonymity could cause problems at work because people like you might destroy that anonymity.
You took action that nobody else who visited his blog took and that action led to problems at his work and those problems forced him to close up shop. You do not bear all the responsibility for his blog shutting down (he could have continued it at the expense of his problems at work) but you do bear a lot. The bottom line is that you took incredibly reckless action without regard for the consequences despite having a plethora of other options such as:
1. You could have left him alone and allowed him to retain anonymity.
2. You could have learned who he was and emailed him that you knew who he was and told him how you found out so that he could either work to reinforce his anonymity or close down his blog without facing problems at work.
3. You could have asked him if he minded you revealing his identity, or at least tried to find out why he was being anonymous.
You did none of these things and consequentially, his blog is gone and he is having work problems. And apparently you don’t think you should apologize either.
I’m just going to stop now before I succumb to the desire to start using the insults that have been hurled at you in the other threads on this matter.
Not hurling the insults and actually engaging in rational discussion gets the comment posted. You’re one of the few hanging around this issue here I respect, even though you have real problems with what I did.
I disagree pretty strongly about the newsworthy thing. Useful as well, but very newsworthy as a source often being cited as the NCAA started sniffing around more. So as a source, credibility matters. As I said, the smart thing for me to do would have been to give the context of what kind of institution he works at (and the fact that he does actually work in compliance), which would have accomplished the same thing.
The “black box” stuff – yeah, the more I think about that the less sense it made to believe identity would do anything there.
Internet culture / anonymity. Again, that is something that matters to me. I wish he hadn’t gone away, but the fact that he did – and apparently vested so much in an anonymity he didn’t come close to achieving – is pretty significant. It’s not something that relates specifically to the NCAA or to sports, but it’s a pretty big issue.
I agree with what you say about his shutting down and my role in that. I felt a need to point out that I did not shut down the blog because I saw so many comments to that effect.
great experience, dude! thanks for this great post wow… it’s very wonderful report.
Sorry – had to approve this one because it’s some awesome spam. wow! But I ditched his spammy link.
I can’t wait for LSU to get railed in the SEC this year. Les Miles is going to get run out of town especially since he’s still relying on Chavis to run the defense. It’s too bad you couldn’t keep Saban. I guess it’s back to having coaches like DiNardo, Hallman, and Archer. It was a nice run while it lasted. Much like this blog. There’s always baseball season right?!?
That’s what I love about SEC football. Fan of some other team comes over to this post from Deadspin, sees I’m an LSU guy and drops a “back to Curley Hallman days” comment. Excellent. Maybe a Bama fan with the Saban line?
For the record, I share your concerns about where LSU is and where we are going. Miles and Crowton don’t exactly inspire confidence. Chavis is pretty decent, but not sure he’s the guy to get us back to defensive dominance.
Just wanted to stop by and say thanks for ruining a perfectly good resource for those of us who wanted to actually get a firsthand account of some of these investigations and the ambiguity that surrounds them.
There was no good reason for you to out him, and put his name out there…none. The only reasons amount to jealousy and being so self centered that you refused to see just how valuable this resource was. Considering you are the proprietor of a blog yourself, it is shameful that you decided to ruin this man’s name and force him to shut the blog down to overwhelming internal pressure.
To say you didnt have a hand in shutting the blog down, is just more BS from someone who obviously doesnt have a spine.
I sincerely hope Karma finds you in the most appropriate of ways. I hope it was worth it, because now everytime someone googles your name or your website, it will be known that you were the self centered jerk who ruined a perfectly good thing.
“You, and only you, wanted to have this guy’s identity revealed and implying that you were doing a public service is insulting to our intelligence.”
C’mon, Seth9, don’t be so naive. If Cap’n didn’t do it than somebody else would have. Lighten up, people, you act like Cap’n gave state secrets to Russia or something. As Shatner said to the Star Trek convention, “GET A LIFE!”
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