News Genius controversy around harassing female writers now includes a letter from Congress
Annotation website Genius has been at the center of a brewing media controversy.
On Tuesday, the whole situation jumped up a notch thanks to a letter from a sitting congresswoman.
Representative Katherine Clark of the 5th District of Massachusetts penned a letter to Genius CEO and cofounder Tom Lehman to express concerns about "the Genius online annotation platform and its lack of safeguards against Internet harassment and abuse."
You May Also Like
Genius, which started out as a website to annotate rap lyrics, has been building out a larger editorial operation in hopes of reaching a larger audience.
The company now provides a tool that can annotate any page on the web, right on the page. As long as users are logged into Genius, they can see annotations on every article and site.
In February, Genius hired former Gawker features editor Leah Finnegan, who had left that site after both public and private disagreements with founder Nick Denton, as managing news editor.
The new position created by Genius had many in media expecting a journalistic effort that added factual detail or questions to stories and commentary, but recently the annotations have taken an editorializing tone.
Concern over bullying
After a bit of a quiet period, Finnegan has been stirring up controversy recently by aggressively annotating articles found on a variety of websites.
In one case, journalist Sara Morrison annotated an article about a young female writer, Ella Dawson, who has herpes simplex-I, leading some to claim that the comments had crossed from annotation or critique into bullying. Finnegan also provided some annotations on the piece.
The annotations -- which Finnegan appeared to defend from the News Genius brand Twitter account -- ignited a multi-day conversation on Twitter. Many took exception to the harsh, personal annotations that to many, reprised the habitual harassment that women face online, which ranges from "gaslighting" their concerns to diminishing the importance of women's experiences and writing.
Dawson was the first to ask for controls on the new use of Genius after Finnegan's annotations.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
In another case, Finnegan annotated another young female writer's piece about being single with what many took as false concern -- or "concern trolling," -- about whether the writer, Alana Massey, needed help.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Representative Clark noted that Genius, which grew out of the popular Rap Genius annotation tool, has some positive uses, but also pointed to downsides, including, as Dawson mentioned, that the tool does not allow websites to block Genius.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Clark did not mention Finnegan's Twitter debates with Massey or Dawson specifically, but referred to recent events.
She also called for a response from Genius to address concerns about abuse of the tool to harass people.
"Now that your platform has been shown to enable abusive behavior, do you have plans to implement a robust reporting and remediation process or provide an op-out function?" Clark wrote.
Clark's request mirrors that of many feminist groups asking Twitter and Facebook to make their reporting functions more robust.
Finnegan posted a defiant response to the letter.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Lehman posted a response to Genius's Twitter account, pushing back against the "false narrative that has taken hold on Twitter and other outlets" about the tool's misues.
He also noted that Genius had on Tuesday added a new button to make it easy to report abuse.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Clark responded that she hoped the discussion would continue.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
On Wednesday, Massey made public an email she sent to Finnegan about the situation.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Updated: 5:02 P.M. EST, March 28, 2016: This piece was updated to reflect that Sara Morrison along with Leah Finnegan annotated a blog post from Ella Dawson. An editing mistake cited Finnegan as the author of tweets from News Genius's brand account, which the company denies.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
Jason Abbruzzese is a Business Reporter at Mashable. He covers the media and telecom industries with a particular focus on how the Internet is changing these markets and impacting consumers. Prior to working at Mashable, Jason served as Markets Reporter and Web Producer at the Financial Times. Jason holds a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University and an M.A. in International Affairs from Australian National University.
