come up with policy and means of handling parody accounts

[chadwhitacre]

We've been notified in support (login required) about a parody account: https://gratipay.com/seriouspony/. The problem is that the account is not labelled as a parody, so it's an impersonation. We don't mention parody accounts or impersonations in our terms of service.

We should probably require parody accounts to be labelled as such in our terms. What do Twitter, Facebook, etc. do here? What about an is_parody bit in the db that people could self-select or admins could also easily set? If set by an admin it shouldn't be unsettable by the user (what if set by the user?).

[chadwhitacre]

"Parody, commentary, and fan account policy" https://support.twitter.com/articles/106373-parody-commentary-and-fan-account-policy

[Changaco]

It seems to me that https://twitter.com/seriouspony is violating the second requirement of the aforementioned Twitter policy for parody accounts:

Account Name: The name should not be the exact name of the account subject without some other distinguishing word, such as "not," "fake," or "fan."

[chadwhitacre]

Could very well be, but that's Twitter's concern, not ours. What's our policy?

[Changaco]

Twitter's policy seems reasonable, we could use the same for Gratipay.

[chadwhitacre]

IRC

[chadwhitacre]

If we go with is_parody I think we should disallow anonymous giving/receiving in that case. Parody accounts should be required to have public giving/receiving numbers.

[kaguillera]

I agree

[chadwhitacre]

You'll see on #2983 that I'm proposing a simple policy for now where we require a disclaimer in the profile statement. I don't think we should require anything re: name/avatar for this, because that's more complicated to administer: we're basically setting up a pseudo-trademark system at that point, and I don't think we want to get into that. There already exists a real trademark system, and we should just defer to that as far as names and avatars go.

On the other hand, the whole value of a parody/fan account derives from the target brand. Parody/fan accounts are parasites (no intrinsic brand value of their own). By determining something to be a parody/fan account we're already saying that the account doesn't have a meaningful existence apart from some target brand. So I guess what I'm saying is that the whole notion of a parody/fan account is wrapped up in a recognition at the Gratipay level (rather than the level of a legal system, the level of the state) that brand value exists and some accounts are parasitizing. We are de facto implementing an in-house trademark system. In that case, we may as well go with name/avatar restrictions in addition to a notice in the statement.

So in the presenting case we'd be deciding that Kathy Sierra has a sort of quasi-trademark on the name seriouspony (I'm not seeing on her site that she asserts a real one), because she has built up a brand around the domain name seriouspony.com and (formerly) the Twitter handle seriouspony.

Is that what we want to do?

[chadwhitacre]

Found this write-up re: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram:

http://www.ipwhiteboard.com.au/parody-accounts-on-facebook-and-instagram-a-no-go-zone/

The latter two don't allow parody accounts. Not a surprise, since Facebook emphasizes actual identity.

[chadwhitacre]

The spirit of trademark law is avoiding confusion and deception. Since Gratipay involves money the stakes are higher than with Twitter.

[chadwhitacre]

Additionally, in order to report the imposter account, the real Adam Gilchrist would have been forced to sign up to Twitter, as Twitter only allows such reports from existing users.

[Note: Instagram is the same; however Facebook allows non-users to report an imposter account.]

[chadwhitacre]

The spirit of trademark law is avoiding confusion and deception.

Well, positively construed, anyway. There are negative construals as well. :)

[chadwhitacre]

Maybe we want to disallow parody accounts entirely? If you run a parody account on Twitter (the only place where you can really run a parody account, it seems like, yes?), and you want money for it, then you should link to a "real" Gratipay account. No?

[chadwhitacre]

I've closed #2983 while we consider whether to allow impersonation at all.

[mattbk]

IMHO, parody accounts shouldn't be allowed on Gratipay, following what whit537 has been saying. But I'm just a humble user.

[chadwhitacre]

@mattbk Thanks for weighing in! :-)

[chadwhitacre]

IRC

[chadwhitacre]

Ping @rummik @chrisdev @dmk246 @seanlinsley.

[kaguillera]

Personally don't think that we should allow parody accounts especially if there main goal is to make money off of the "real" person. Additionally as stated by @whit537 they add no value (neither to this site or society as a whole). If we are trying to promote people to give to worth causes and people that inspire them (correct me if I am wrong) I don't see parody accounts falling in that category.

[dmk246]

I am not a user of Twitter so I may not be completely understanding the point of a parody account in general let alone for Gratipay. I agree with @kaguillera . Honestly, what I have read so far online about these accounts, it seems too "messy" or cause more problems later on if they are allowed on Gratipay. ....especially since Gratipay handles money. Also, I think that not allowing them would mesh more with supporting the mission statement and the reputation I think ( * assuming )@whit537 and other collaborators want to establish with Gratipay. So ... basically (after all that) I am leaning more towards not allowing them. What would the positive be of allowing them? I might be missing something considering I am not completely familiar.

[chrisdev]

hmmm... This is kinda tricky. It is clear we can ban anyone who we want to under the TOS. Hover, maybe the parody account is really someones "brand" and they may be trying pick up some financial support from their fans.

[chadwhitacre]

Let's distinguish between:

• impersonation—pretending to be someone else, confusing at best, deceptive at worst, we definitely don't want this on Gratipay.
• parody—clearly marked as such so as not to confuse/deceive, but still references the identity of another person/organization.

@dmk246 I guess the value of a parody account is comedy for the parody account's audience. As @chrisdev points out, I probably overstated the case above: parody accounts do add some value of their own, though of course they could never exist without the account subject.

In IRC @techtonik points out that parody that is marked as such loses its force, isn't as funny and/or harmful anymore. That's okay. The fun of it is in doing something edgy, something that The Authorities are going to slap you down for. We are The Authorities. It's our job to put an end to fun/harm. That said, we're not going to police what people do on platforms other than Gratipay. We are going to police what people do on Gratipay.

How are we going to disallow impersonation? Allowing parody accounts is one way: you must distinguish your account from the account subject. That's the tack Twitter takes, and I've borrowed their language in #2983. What are the alternatives? We could go the Facebook route and require "real" identity for all Gratipay users. I think there may be some cases where we will want strong identity (I'm thinking of #84), but enforcing real identity is contentious in its own right, as well as being difficult to implement. I don't think we want to go that route for Gratipay right now.

I think we should adopt #2983 because it draws the line where the line is clear: we definitely don't want impersonation. It's always easier to tighten up than to relax the rules, if we decide down the road that we need/want to be even stricter.

[chadwhitacre]

Last call for vetoes. I'd like to land this this afternoon if possible.

[chadwhitacre]

https://twitter.com/Gratipay/status/542429255049543680