Memorial Websites Fight Mean-Spirited Comments

Karla O’Malley tried to comfort a boy injured in a car crash on Christmas Eve in Kansas. When he died, she visited a memorial website for him and was horrified to find a comment by someone who wished the boy had suffered more. These sites are intended to provide the family of a lost loved one with comfort, not cause additional pain.

While a federal law banning demeaning comments on memorial sites would be unconstitutional, the sites themselves can set their own rules and conditions. Even so, they are struggling to find the best way to prevent mean-spirited comments from being posted. The most effective method of doing so is to have an editor review each comment before it’s posted, but doing so is very expensive. Some sites are considering forcing people to register and post comments by name, but this drastically reduces the size of the online audience. Other sites have implemented self-policing systems where members flag offensive comments.

Memorial site providers, who admit that approximately 5% of comments are mean-spirited, are committed to preventing commenters from disparaging the deceased. “[A]busive commenters have the right to free speech, but that doesn’t mean that websites have to give them a soapbox.”

Ken Paulson, Speech Gets Ugly Online, But It’s Still Free, USA Today, Feb. 22, 2011.