WASHINGTON — After an area fire chief called out his website, a Virginia website owner is speaking out.
Cary Wiedemann, owner of Fairfax Underground, said that聽Fairfax County Fire Chief Richard Bowers’ call for the site to remove posts about firefighter-paramedic Nicole Mittendorff is an attempt to shift the spotlight from the department.
鈥淔airfax Underground believes the fire chief鈥檚 comments are a clear deflection of blame,鈥� Wiedemann said.
On Friday, the fire chief called for the site to remove several vulgar posts which criticized Mittendorff鈥檚 sex life, her appearance and even her death. The comments sparked speculation about the role cyber-bullying may have played聽in Mittendorff鈥檚 demise. Virginia State Police has said there is no evidence that the posts were a factor in her death, which was ruled a suicide.
Wiedemann said that the message board with the comments contained thousands of posts, and moderators were not aware of聽the comments’ existence before the 31-year-old went missing. The website has a policy against personal attacks, and if users flagged those posts, Wiedemann said that they would have been removed.
Wiedemann said removing the comments now, after the fact, would cause confusion among people researching what happened. He also said that, ultimately, it is difficult to truly remove anything from the Internet.
鈥淚t can be re-posted thousands of times, with slightly different variations and no one will ever know what the true original looked like,鈥� Wiedemann said.
The website owner said he would be willing to remove the posts if he were to receive a request from Mittendorff鈥檚 family.
When it comes to users who posted the comments, Wiedemann said he wants to see them brought to justice. He said that聽with a court order, he can turn over the anonymous poster鈥檚 IP addresses to investigators. With an IP address, police can contact internet service providers and see who the address belonged to when the post was made. So far, Wiedemann has not been contacted about handing over the addresses.
Wiedemann said that聽the focus here needs to be on the people behind the posts and the not the website which the posts appear on.
Fairfax Underground has been around for 11 years, and Wiedemann said that he built it around users being able lead the conversation. The website owner said that unfortunately in this situation, it was used for abusive purposes.
鈥淭here is not much that can be done in today鈥檚 legal frame work to prevent a few dedicated bad actors from tarnishing someone else鈥檚 reputation on the Internet,” Wiedemann said.
