John Breunig: Trolling the trolls, or adding to their arsenal?

My heart tells me to cheer for Candace Owens, to celebrate her resolve to put an end to online hate speech.

My gut tells me her effort is misguided.

A week ago, we published Owens’ provocative essay in which she asked readers “Do you remember me?”

I could never forget her.

Nine years ago, Owens made our front pages after a car full of teenage boys left a series of racist and threatening messages on her cellphone. Even then, she showed courage in choosing to share the repugnant words with adults.

Now 26, she is launching a database that collects online hate speech and identifies the users for “employers, universities, future husbands and wives.”

Her SocialAutopsy.com site team reports that they have collected “30,000 profiles from unsuspecting users, and attached their words to their places of employment. We now invite the public to join us by anonymously uploading screenshots from the people they know who lob hurtful insults and words.”

Though well-intentioned, this is not a partnership with law enforcement officials, and has the most primitive of vetting procedures. The site explains the method for identifying offenders: “Screenshots are submitted anonymously by online friends of that user. Their ‘friends’ of course, know their full names and details.”

Newspaper editorial pages traditionally strive to serve as a public square under the condition that people put their names behind their words. In ideal circumstances, varied voices collide in a chess match of perspectives. The absence of identities breeds hate. Threatening people is never free speech. The internet turns the chess match into Thunderdome, with cowardly gladiators attacking the innocent while cloaked behind masks.

Owens is trying to rip off those masks. It’s pretty hard not to root for her mission to shame those who seek to harm others, to silence the sadists.

Unfortunately, her methodology turns her team into cyber-vigilantes. The site claims distinctions will be made between opinions and harmful speech, reasoning “We all know the difference.”

So Owens and her team will serve as judge and jury. The offending poster will be slapped with a scarlet letter.

How could this possibly go wrong?

It will go wrong the first time someone is falsely accused. Owens plans to launch the database once 100,000 profiles are collected in “the morgue,” and will sentence suspected abusers to a minimum of one year of public exposure. Of course, there are no minimums on the internet. How many of those abusers will be children? How many will be mistaken identities? How many profiles will further abuse victims of adept trollers? Owens carries the responsibility of ensuring a profile is not being posted out of revenge, caprice, as just one more tool in the bullying arsenal. The dark possibilities of misuse are terrifying.

We made a difficult decision ourselves nine years ago when we reported that then-Mayor Dannel Malloy’s 14-year-old son was among the boys who left racist threats on Owens’ phone. As The Advocate city editor in charge of news coverage at the time, I hold responsibility for that decision.

Police shielded his identity because he was a minor, but some officers and officials in the community couldn’t resist murmuring about the mayor’s son. Once we confirmed his identity, we didn’t simply post it on our website. We called the mayor. He didn’t deny it or try to cover it up. Malloy responded quickly with a statement: “I am today confirming that my son, who is 14 years old, has in fact fully cooperated with the Stamford Police Department in its investigation.”

He provided confirmation, but also reminded us, and the public, that it is unusual in cases like this for the identities of juveniles to be reported in the media. Then he explained in plain speak exactly why this was an exceptional circumstance: “However, in light of my status as mayor and father, I have decided to issue this statement.”

Many people in the community were livid that we had dragged a 14-year-old into the public eye. The alternative was that we — and the future governor — would have been accused of a cover-up. In case of doubt, transparency is the best course.

Still, I can’t apply similar reasoning to SocialAutopsy.com. The Malloy boy’s role remains a mystery because of his legal status as a juvenile at the time, but we know he was in the car. Owens’ website carries a high risk of hurting someone who is innocent.

My 4-year-old son surprised me the other day with this query, an attempt to expand his vocabulary: “What does ‘empathy’ mean, Daddy?”

If he were older, I could point to Candace Owens as an admirable model of empathy. She recalls the boys being labeled as “racist” and “no good,” characterizing these as “words that no child deserves to hear.”

There are few words as powerful as “empathy” and “forgiveness.” Another one in that class is “mercy.” Owens shows mercy by declaring that the boys in the car did not deserve to be branded.

So I hope she considers the perils of the power she now wields. I hope she can stir things up. I hope she can motivate law enforcement and elected officials to become more proactive to treat threats spewed through social media as seriously as they would if they were made in a classroom or a town hall, or over the phone.

But I also hope she reconsiders her site before another innocent person gets hurt.