Getting fined for posts on Facebook? Could be the wave of the future

A woman living in suburban Bolingbrook could be the first of many who will face fines because they couldn’t control what they decided to post about themselves on Facebook.

Actually, in this instance, the woman won’t face a fine because officials with the Will County Forest Preserve District decided to rescind the ticket they initially issued her – one that called for a $50 fine.

BUT THE FACT that someone reading a Facebook page who was in a position of authority decided that something posted there could be worthy of some form of discipline could be something we see more of.

And it’s likely that in the future, some official won’t back down from insisting on collecting a fine. Some municipality is bound to think they need the money badly enough to want to have someone scour through Facebook in search of something that could hint at a violation.

One that needs to be punished!

“Big Brother” really is watching you! Even all the stupid, trivial things you elect to post on your Facebook account page.

PERSONALLY, I ONLY use Facebook to promote this weblog and its sister site. Anybody reading my page is only going to get tidbits about what is published here. Along with the occasional comment my aunts in the greater Minneapolis, Minn., area decide to post.

Although I suppose someone offended by my opinion could try to harass me in the same way. Not that I’m overly concerned about what some anonymous crank thinks of what I choose to write.

But the larger lesson is that Facebook does put our comments out there to a wide audience – many of whom are people we don’t know. That’s kind of the whole point of the concept – which is why I don’t post much personal material beyond what I write here.

It’s kind of like asking the local police to prod in your life, which is what happened to the Bolingbrook woman.

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE reported Thursday now the woman got a $50 ticket on May 20 because of a comment she posted on a page related to the Whalon Lake Dog Park in Bolingbrook.

There have been problems at the dog park related to “kennel cough” being passed around area dogs. The woman, according to the Tribune, posted a comment saying she hadn’t bought a permit to use the dog park this year, but wrote it in a vague way that could be interpreted to say she had used the park.

One forest preserve district read the comment, passed it along to a superior, and then the ticket was issued.

It seems the woman hasn’t been at the dog park this year, so the ticket for using the dog park without a permit turned out to be premature.

THE DISTRICT’S POLICE department said it is reviewing its policies, while saying it does not plan to routinely monitor social media accounts. They also say there are no plans to discipline the officer who issued the citation, or any others involved, because they tell the Tribune there were “good intentions” involved.

But what happens when we get a governmental entity that isn’t quite so understanding about the concept of social media and a person’s desire to express themselves?

Will we someday get overzealous officials who view social media comments the same way they now view traffic violations – as something to be routed out in great numbers so that citations can be issued and fines can be collected.

People should keep this in mind, and perhaps learn to be overly precise in what they write. Because even though they think they’re writing for a select audience of like-minded people, other people are reading. And reacting.

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No more anonymity? Count me in!

I write this commentary knowing full well that somebody out there, most likely someone who didn’t have a clue I existed previously, is going to become extremely infuriated.

SILVERSTEIN: A good idea, or just an attention-getter?

For all I know, I may make some permanent enemies.

BUT WHEN IT comes to a bill introduced in the Illinois General Assembly by state Sen. Ira Silverstein, D-Chicago, that would eliminate a person’s ability to post anonymous comments in response to Internet postings, count me in!

I would have no problem with a new law that would require anyone wishing to put their views on this weblog at the end of my daily efforts to have to identify themselves.

Not that I’m interested in publishing the IP and mailing addresses of any of my commenters. But I actually believe that people having to take credit for their thoughts is more likely to make them more responsible – and reduce the amount of borderline literate trash talk that pollutes the Internet and chips away at its credibility.

A similar effort was tried in the state Legislature in New York, but went nowhere. Personally, I suspect Silverstein’s effort will meet the same legislative fate.

OUR LEGISLATORS MAY well conclude that they have more important things to deal with than the nonsensical posts that all too often criticize everything in sight – and occasionally do so in such a crass and vulgar manner that I always wind up feeling more stupid for having wasted a few seconds reading them.

Anything that eliminates waste and stupidity is a good thing. So Silverstein gets my praise for his effort – even though I know he’s mostly trying to get himself some public attention without having to do any of the heavy lifting of actually getting a bill through the legislative process toward becoming a new law.

Now I know this is not a popular idea amongst those people who spend (in my opinion) way too much time posting comments on various Internet sites to the point that I wonder if they have any lives beyond (most likely) using their work computers to write their ramblings.

I’d think it a better use of their time if they went back to playing Solitaire on their computers!

THE RESPONSES (ALL anonymous) that I have read try to make this out to be some sort of censorship issue – one in which their Constitutional right to freedom of expression is being threatened.

All “red-blooded Americans” ought to be prepared to “defend to the death” (often attributed to Voltaire) their right to anonymously post a hateful rant that basically amounts to them telling the original writer to shut the hell up and NEVER disagree with their (often close-minded) thoughts in public again.

Yes, I find way too many anonymous posts to be about trying to stifle debate. They’re not about expressing one’s thoughts. Which makes the whole concept that this amounts to censorship to be a whole lot of nonsense!

Which is why I consider myself generous in that I permit just about all comments on this weblog – except for those people who persist in delving down into profanity to express themselves.

IF ANY OF these people were to want to create their own sites on the Internet and use them to express their thoughts on issues, I have no problem with that. If they want to engage in hateful rants, that’s their business.

I’m not going to bother spending time to read them. But they are free to express themselves in such a way if that’s the best they can do. Heck, I’ll even offer them technical advice or any other support in the creation of such Internet sites.

Just don’t think you have a right to come onto my weblogs (or anyone else’s sites) and impose yourself. Because if anyone is trying to engage in censorship, it is you – the anonymous one.

And perhaps the reason you’re so desperate for anonymity is that old Mark Twain saying; the one about opening your mouth and “removing all doubt” that you’re a fool.

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Is Ozzie a prototype 21st Century mgr?

We’re definitely in a new era. Technology is overtaking our society and turning it into something completely nonsensical. Even on the baseball diamond.

Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen didn’t run the team during Friday’s game against the Baltimore Orioles, nor will be on Saturday night.

THAT IS THE two-game suspension he received from Major League Baseball officials after being ejected from Wednesday night’s 3-1 loss to the New York Yankees. The umpire who kicked Ozzie out of the game says the manager used profanity while speaking to him.

It is typical that a manager who gets kicked out of a game gets some sort of penalty from league officials. But the reason this particular ejection is gaining national attention is because of what Ozzie did AFTER the ejection.

The “old school” manager would have tried hiding in the shadows of the tunnel connecting the dugout to the clubhouse, possibly feeding crude signals to whichever coach becomes acting manager in the real manager’s absence to try to impact the game’s direction.

The old school manager with a temper might go to the clubhouse and inflict some serious damage.

SO WHAT DID Ozzie do?

He went on-line. Specifically, he used his Twitter account to send out a couple of messages to the people who follow his “tweets” (which are mostly read by “twits,” but that is a subject for another day’s discussion).

In their official statement, Major League Baseball officials said they had a problem with Guillen sending out messages while the game was still in progress Wednesday night.

Perhaps they think he was sending out signals that could have influenced the outcome of the ballgame (which was a Mark Buehrle pitching performance wasted by weak hitting from the White Sox)?

I DON’T GET it. Particularly since after reading Guillen’s Twitter account to see what the offending “tweets” were, I’d have to say they were downright trivial. I’m actually more offended at how grammatically awful and poorly spelled they were.

His initial Twitter reaction to being ejected was to type out, “This one going to cost me a lot money this is patetic.” That’s literally what he wrote.

He followed up that message with a later statement saying, “Today a tough guy show up a yankee stadium.”

That is what Major League Baseball construes as a violation of “social media policy and other regulations regarding the use of electronic equipment during the course of a game.”

I CAN’T HELP but think of the baseball managers from when I was young construing such a response as timid, if not downright sissy-ish. I can’t envision the late Billy Martin typing a tweet on Twitter (or if he tried, it would be so foul and obscene that he’d likely be facing prosecution by some law enforcement type for disseminating profane language and thought). I wonder at times what our city’s sports scene would have become back in ’78 if Yankees owner George Steinbrenner had followed through on his mid-season whim and traded “manager” Martin to the White Sox (for Sox manager Bob Lemon, and how surreal both of those hard-drinkers would have found this latest controversy to be?

But back to the present.

Ozzie’s initial response was to use his Twitter account to acknowledge that he was going to be in trouble for getting ejected – on account of the fact that his fiery temperament is such that his every action gets exaggerated.

As for his use of the word “patetic” to describe his upcoming punishment, I’d say what is pathetic is that he couldn’t spell “pathetic,” particularly since the so-called big advantage of computer keyboards as opposed to typewriters is that it is easy to fix one’s typographical errors.

THERE IS NEVER a reason for a typo, except for one’s literary laziness.

It actually makes me respect Chicago Cubs manager Mike Quade just a bit more for telling the Chicago Tribune, “I will never get in trouble tweeting, twittering, tweetering, I can’t even say it, because I will never do it,” Quade said. “I don’t have the time, energy or know-how, and I’m real happy about that.”

Some people are going to argue that trying to ignore Twitter is wrong because too many people are on it and that it is somehow snobby (if not elitist) to refuse to communicate in 140-character bursts of thought.

After reading through Guillen’s tweet-ed thoughts from the past few days, I can’t say that I missed out on anything by not reading these in “real” time.

UNLESS YOU REALLY want to believe Guillen’s observation from Monday that, “New York no good restaurant open late.”

For all I know, that statement could wind up offending New Yorkers – who really like to think they’re the “city that never sleeps” and that you can find anything, at any hour.

It certainly is more intriguing than Guillen’s weblog, where his latest posting is of a picture of himself with mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel.

Which may well mean that Guillen is the prototypical baseball manager of the 21^st Century, capable of using the latest technology to spew his thoughts. Just think of what Casey Stengel and his “Stengel-ese” would have been like if given to us in 140-character bursts of garble?

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