I don't usually punch down—that is, refer to meaningless "debates" I have on unnamed microblogging platform that I have with people who don't have their own websites—but I wanted to make an exception here, potentially because it's useful to refer to, for my colleagues who give bad advice to students (more specifically, my counselor colleagues who tell their students to check prospective instructors' reviews, without also considering the possibility, well, reviews are false, some quite possibly defamatory).
Anyways; below is the screenshot of interaction where I realized this may be happening—hey, if you have questions about quality of my teaching, watch my lecture videos, publicly available on YouTube.
The interaction may also be accessed on Twitter itself, although, you know, these things don't last—I myself delete my own tweets that are older than 2 years.
Preserving a record of another, earlier interaction. I didn't understand at the time what the pseudonym account was referring to, when it said, "Like your name and where you work," because from my perspective, all that is public information (I work for a public institution, information like when I started working at some place is publicly accessible to those who know where to look)—so like my email address, I didn't mind posting it publicly, unlike, for example, my home address or birthdate, which I am careful to keep private.
What I didn't fully understand then is the particularly toxic combination of those who are willing to defame you at the slightest "provocation" and their laziness—the fact that my name and where I work was available right on my profile page acted basically as an invitation to defame. So, I changed my profile (after the above July interaction), not so much to hide what is basically public information, but as a first, low-effort barrier for the lazy would-be defamers.
P.S. Above thread can be accessed, until when it will eventually be deleted under my regular data retention protocol.
Preserved for record. These screenshots are from February 28, 2019.
