At UChicago, a Debate Over Free Speech and Cyber Bullying; The New York Times, July 3, 2023

Vimal Patel, The New York Times ; At UChicago, a Debate Over Free Speech and Cyber Bullying

"Mary Anne Franks, a University of Miami law professor who studies civil rights and technology, said that universities should pay more attention to the intimidation of faculty members.

Cyberbullying “is much more intentional, vicious and threatening to a person than someone shouting unpleasant things to a person during a talk,” she said, adding that Mr. Schmidt’s behavior “was very much calculated to generate exactly the reaction that it did.”"

Maryland Mayor Is Charged in ‘Revenge Porn’ Case; The New York Times, November 16, 2021

Amanda Holpuch, The New York Times; Maryland Mayor Is Charged in ‘Revenge Porn’ Case

Andrew Bradshaw, the mayor of Cambridge, on the state’s Eastern Shore, posted nude photos of a former partner on Reddit, along with degrading comments and racial slurs, prosecutors said. 

"The landscape for revenge porn cases has shifted significantly over the past decade. In 2013, three states had criminalized nonconsensual pornography. Today, 48 states have done so, said Mary Anne Franks, the president and legislative and tech policy director at the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. Maryland’s revenge porn law went into effect in 2014.

Dr. Franks said Maryland’s law, like others in the United States, was too restrictive because, to convict someone, prosecutors must prove that the person who shared the photos intended to cause serious emotional distress.

That standard can protect people who say they posted photos for profit, to improve standing in their community or because they didn’t think the individual in the photo would care, Dr. Franks said. Prosecutors might have an easier time proving malicious intent in Mr. Bradshaw’s case, she said, because of the breadth and cruelty of the posts prosecutors accused him of making."

The One Law That’s The Cause Of Everything Good And Terrible About The Internet; HuffPost, August 6, 2018

Paul Blumenthal, HuffPost; The One Law That’s The Cause Of Everything Good And Terrible About The Internet

"“We were living in an age where people were talking about the internet like it was a utopia. The problem with utopias is that they are really, for lack of a better word, lies,” Mary Anne Franks, the co-founder of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, told HuffPost. 

“What happens when Congress tells all these corporations, all these intermediaries, ahead of time that nothing’s ever going to happen to you?” said Franks, who is also a University of Miami law professor. “You’ve really got to ask what kind of corporation is going to spend the money or the resources or the time on developing anything like a robust response to harassment when they don’t have to...

“It’s a problem that they’re 10 years behind on,” Franks said. “This is the kind of thing that if you truly wanted to tackle the problem of online abuse you have to do it at the design stage, not on the backend.”

The problem was at the design stage. These companies knew that they would never be legally liable for any of that harassment."

There’s no good way to deal with trolls, so you might as well tattle to their moms; Washington Post, 1/2/17

Jessica Contrera, Washington Post; There’s no good way to deal with trolls, so you might as well tattle to their moms:

"People being harassed can alert the police, but law enforcement has struggled to identify and prosecute anonymous online harassers. Of the millions of people who were stalked and harassed online between 2010 and 2013, only 10 cyberstalking cases were filed in federal courts during that time, according to a review by “Hate Crimes in Cyberspace” author Danielle Citron. These situations nearly always involve not just one harasser, but dozens or even thousands threatening or spreading a false rumor about their victim.

“Every single individual who promotes [the rumor] is part of the problem, but none of them are actually criminally responsible,” explained Mary Anne Franks, the legislative policy director at the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, which advocates for laws to protect online victims.

Franks said there is no “one size fits all” approach for dealing with trolls, but she doesn’t recommend trying to reason with them.

“There is nothing you can say to them that won’t give them more to work with,” Franks said."