Who Makes the Rules of Social Media?

Jamie Spencer wrote a post about Sparta Townson, Internet Guru Girl; as of right now it comes up fifth on a search for her name (after her WordPress.com blog, her LinkedIn page, and her Twitter page). 

I wrote about Sparta Townson at Defending People as well, in the context of the marketing services she is trying to sell, as did Ken at Popehat.

Aside from the reputational questions for the lawyers who are Townson's target market, The story has interesting angles in the realm of pure social media, which belong here at SMT rather than Defending People.
The dispute, as presented by Jamie, was this: Sparta Townson was posting (or more likely paying someone else to post) spam comments on lawyers' behalfs on Jamie's blog. Jamie objected, and had the decency to call Townson on the phone. Townson took the position that, because comments on Jamie's blog were open, she was allowed to spam the comments and there was nothing he could do about it. Then she hung up on Jamie (another topic, for another day: how little social-media savvy some social-media experts display.)

Is Townson right? If a blog has "open" (not moderated) comments, is it fair game for the spammers?

That question can be broken down into two parts.

First, who makes the rules for Jamie's blog comments? Like his home, Jamie's blog is his castle; Jamie is sovereign there. If Jamie elects to leave his door open, that's not permission for Townson to come in and shit on his Persian rugs.

Jamie has a rule: no comment spam. It's not even an arbitrary rule. Anyone who's been around the internet for any length of time since Canter & Siegel knows that spam is unwelcome. Townson can't possibly be surprised that her feces are unwelcome on the Bakhtiari.

Townson knows they're unwelcome, but still she leaves them. She thinks she can get away with it, because there's nothing Jamie can do about it. Is she right? A rule without a sanction is a courtesy; if Jamie is sovereign on his blog but can't enforce his rules, they might as well not exist, and Townson can make her own rules.

But Jamie's blog (powered by Kevin O'Keefe's LexBlog, by the way, in case you insist on spending money on a social media expert) has Google PageRank 5. What that means, in practical terms, is that if someone doesn't have a strong web presence already (another topic for another day: social media "experts" with weak web presence), when Jamie writes a post about her it's going to come up high in Google search results for her name (another topic for another day: how a real—as opposed to self-styled—social media expert would deal with that post.)

Is that a sanction? Sure it is—potential clients Google "Sparta Townson" or "Internet Guru Girl," and instead of finding the reputation she's cultivating for herself they find the unsavory truth.

So Townson can't make her own rules. She can choose not to to engage in offensive conduct, or to do so and risk the sanction.

Jamie is not limited to naming Townson, though. He could also—if he chose to—name the lawyers who are paying Sparta to defecate on his carpet. Those paying Townson to spam for her are responsible for the spam as well; there is a theory (yet another topic for another day) holding that the best way to stop the comment spam is not to make an example of the Sparta Townsons of the world, but to make an example of those who are paying the Sparta Townsons of the world. If they stop paying her, she stops spamming.

Nobody gets to tell Jamie what to do on his blog. The so-called experts who want to spam with impunity can call it "bullying" when Jamie lays down the sanction of his choice for breaking his rules, but even if they had a web presence worth a damn, I doubt that Jamie would care.

Who makes the rules? Those who, like Jamie, are writing the content that people want to read (and link to) make the rules.