Wall Street Journal - November 15, 2001
Julia Angwin, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

Eventually, Dr. Klausner, the director of sexually-transmitted-disease prevention for the city's Department of Public Health, traced seven cases of syphilis in 1999 to men who met in an America Online chat room called SF M4M (for San Francisco Men For Men). Since then, syphilis has spread rapidly among gay men in San Francisco, rising to 93 cases in the first nine months of this year, compared with 47 cases total last year and 29 cases in 1999. Syphilis is an infectious disease that is mostly spread through sexual contact and can be fatal if left untreated.

As the disease has spread, Dr. Klausner has been trying to get the word out about the need for safe sex. Local sex clubs, some gay-oriented Web sites and adult bookstores have joined the campaign. But he hasn't been able to persuade America Online, a unit of AOL Time Warner Inc. of New York, to post any sort of warnings or health advisories in its chat room -- or anywhere else on the online service.

"All I'm asking AOL to do is an education and awareness campaign," says Dr. Klausner. "I'm not asking them to close the chat room, or to restrict access to it, or to give personal information about the users. To me, I see it as similar to getting tobacco companies to label their products or alcohol companies to label their products."

America Online says it has no plans to post the warnings that Dr. Klausner seeks. "We appreciate his input and we encourage him to continue bringing any concerns he has to our attention," says America Online spokesman Andrew Weinstein. Instead, he says, America Online has been working for the past year to develop a series of sexual health advisories with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He wouldn't say when those notices would appear online.

With more than 30 million members, America Online prides itself on being an online community that offers a kinder, gentler Internet experience. After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, AOL staffers raced to post useful "How you can help" links to the Red Cross and other organizations on its online service.

While America Online rival EarthLink Inc. markets itself as the "real Internet" because it doesn't filter any material, America Online has an army of volunteers who patrol message boards, erasing indecent or abusive language. And the service prides itself on its parental controls, which allow parents to censor what their children view online.

Just last month, one of America Online's 10,000 volunteers, whom the company calls "community leaders," erased some "disruptive and vulgar" postings on a Bruce Springsteen message board. America Online removes enough material that the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a watchdog group, has created a list of poetry deleted by America Online.

America Online says its community leaders actively police only certain chat rooms. The majority of chat rooms, such as SF M4M, are self-policing; members are encouraged to notify America Online if they feel abused or harassed in a chat room. In August, a Muslim man filed a lawsuit accusing America Online of ignoring his requests to end the anti-Islamic harassment in some Muslim chat rooms. Mr. Weinstein, the spokesman, says the lawsuit is "totally without merit" and that the company has "zero tolerance" for hate speech.

America Online does place advertisements in its chat rooms, including some public-service announcements. The National Coalition of STD Directors asked the company last month to post public service announcements in chat rooms where AOL members meet sexual partners. America Online responded by citing its efforts with the CDC.

America Online says it has offered Dr. Klausner free access to its chat rooms so that he could post health-advisory messages himself. He declined the offer, saying that he lacks a staff large enough to continuously monitor the chat rooms and offer words of caution.

In contrast, Gay.com and PlanetOut.com, two leading gay-oriented Web sites owned by PlanetOut Partners Inc., often run banner ads promoting safe sex and send volunteers in to talk with users about health issues in their hundreds of chat rooms. PlanetOut recently held an online forum with Dr. Klausner's staff about syphilis. "Throughout the company's history, we've worked with public health officials to inform our members about public health issues while respecting privacy," says PlanetOut spokesman Bryce Eberhart.

Studies show that people who use chat rooms to find sexual partners are more likely to have contracted sexually transmitted diseases, according to Tom Coates, director of the AIDS Research Institute at the University of California at San Francisco. One reason is the culture of the chat rooms. "One of the norms that has developed has been a norm of unsafe [sexual] activity," Mr. Coates says. "Anything we can do to bring that norm around is helpful."

America Online does have at least one supporter in its policy. Act Up San Francisco, an AIDS activist organization, put out a press release late last month urging America Online to "resist pressure from government health officials" to post health advisories online, calling those efforts the "bigoted brainchild" of Dr. Klausner.

"We feel that Dr. Klausner is invading gay men's privacy," said Todd Swindell, a spokesman for Act Up San Francisco, which doesn't believe that HIV causes AIDS.

Write to Julie Angwin at julie.angwin@wsj.com2

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