My Terms of Service Study is Published

My study on whether rewriting web sites' terms of service in "plain English" is effective in making them more understandable to users has been published in the academic journal Social Media + Society. It is available at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2056305119897321.

Two Online Marketing Bungles

Two recent developments show that marketers who attempt to use pranks as part of their online marketing campaigns run the risk of instead engendering anger rather than sales. And there are also legal risks to such activities.

Mi Casa Es Su Casa — But I Set the Rules

(cross posted at the Citizen Media Law Project) 
Paul Klocko got a surprise in the mail in April: a letter on official stationary from Weston, Wisconsin administrator Dean Zuleger, demanding that Klocko stop posting comments on the web criticizing him.  The letter also asked that Klocko "come out from behind the cloak" and meet Zuleger in person.


The letter was surprising because Klocko had posted his comments on the web site of the Wausau Daily Herald using a pseudonym, "juanmoore."  But when Zuleger contacted the newspaper, demanding that it identify his anonymous critic, the Daily Herald gave him Klocko's real e-mail address, which Klocko had provided when registering as a commenter on the site and which contained his true name.