Expectation of Privacy

There are only two occasions when Americans respect privacy, especially in Presidents. Those are prayer and fishing.  – Herbert Hoover

We couldn’t resist commenting on the latest brouhaha between CNN and the Reddit user who doctored a video to make the CNN logo appear in fisticuffs with the President. Paula and I were struck by different aspects of this topic, so we decided to present our individual viewpoints separately in this post.

Here is a brief recap: Reddit is a social media service that lets users anonymously post commentary, pictures, video, etc. which are then shown on the online site in order of popularity (determined by votes from other users). A Reddit user recently posted a video clip he edited depicting the President wrestling someone to the ground with the CNN logo superimposed on the victim’s head. The link to this video went viral and the President himself used it in a Twitter post. Though it was obviously meant as satire, CNN was offended and undertook to discover the true identity of the author who went by the pseudonym “HansA**holeSolo”. Once discovered, CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski threatened to expose that identity to the public.

Tom’s take –

There are two primary considerations here. First, did the Reddit user have a reasonable expectation of privacy? Second, did CNN’s response constitute a threat, such as blackmail or coercion, which at best would be inappropriate and at worst illegal?

To start, I do not believe anyone can have an expectation of identity privacy using a social media service (e.g Reddit). This is particularly true if you are participating in several of these services at once. Seemingly disconnected snippets of information about you can be correlated across these services to reconstruct your true identity, despite the implied anonymity of a pseudonym. This is how CNN found the Reddit user’s identity. The main reason identity discovery is possible in this scenario is that most of those snippets of information were willingly provided by the user – not stolen, purchased or otherwise illicitly obtained. Personal responsibility for the information one volunteers about themselves on social media cannot just be swept under the rug because the bullying actions of a big corporation have conjured up compassion. That being said, CNN is clearly taking vengeful advantage of this person’s desire to remain anonymous. “Blackmail” immediately leaps into your head when you read CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski’s article detailing their actions and intentions regarding the video-maker, HansA**holeSolo.

Historically there are legitimate benefits to publishing under a pseudonym, both for the information producer and consumer. The best example I know of are the “Federalist Papers”. These 85 essays explaining the US Constitution were published in 1787-1788 under the name “Publius”, masking the names of the true authors Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. Information to inform a ratification decision was transferred to the public without being dismissed out of hand because of personal/political animus towards the authors. Similarly, engaging and productive discourse can be achieved today on social media, unaffected by knowledge of a person’s gender, education, politics, etc.

While the use of pseudonyms is not by any means a new phenomenon, social media services today have enabled exponentially greater use of them. The ease with which hidden identities can be created and used in social media, while fun, has a big potential downside. People using aliases will often say things that they would not were their true name attached. And if their true identity were exposed, there remain unanswered questions (at least to the average user) regarding the sanctity of the alias. Who’s at fault if your true identity is discovered? Is there a legal issue if that true identity is then published without your consent? Most importantly, does having a social media username different from your own qualify as a reasonable “expectation of privacy”?

Our education system must begin to include at an early age instruction regarding at least three aspects of social media services. Youth must be informed just how fast and how far information travels when put into these services. This applies to personal identifying information as well as created content (comments, pictures, videos). Second, it must be made clear to students that creating and putting provocative content into these services greatly increases the probability of that content ending up in places never anticipated by the author and also increases the risk of the author’s identity being exposed. The third and greatest risk which students must learn is the risk they incur by targeting their commentary to highly-charged current events/topics, especially when that commentary is intentionally provocative. Being aware of the “potency factor” of a topic is clearly a personal responsibility. Naivety and incomplete understanding of hot-button current events can no longer be excuses for receiving unexpectedly strong reactions to one’s own social media postings. The fact is that any resulting ramifications, fair or not, originated from the personal decision made to post the content in the first place. Yes, freedom of speech must always be honored in this country. But if your free speech includes provocations and attacks, whether humorously intended or not, you are inviting a reaction.

Note –  Admittedly, there is a lot of technical complexity to exactly how your information flows within and among social media services. So much so, that the precise mechanism even eludes many degreed computer scientists these days. However, a lack of understanding of how this flow works is not a reason to be surprised at how far and wide your social media content may reach. You simply must expect it can happen.

Paula’s take –

Can anyone be surprised that HanA**holeSolo was cowed and abashed when CNN, a media powerhouse without qualms which acts daily to discredit and destroy the most powerful man in the world -the American President- intimates that it “reserves the right” to do the same to a simple Reddit user?

Notwithstanding his naïve reliance on the illusion of anonymity provided by his alias, one can’t fault Mr. HanA**holeSolo for failing to predict the magnitude of his unmasking. HanA**holeSolo won a bizarre version of the social media lottery, with rewards and perils likely well beyond his power to have foreseen. After all, what were the chances that his doctored video, designed to amuse his peers and express his political view satirically, would wind up where it did?

Promoted by the President, and suddenly MUCH more visible than he ever imagined it would be, HanA**holeSolo’s amateur production and his own identity were targeted by one of the Presidents’ most virulent media adversaries. The exact content of the message CNN left for HanA**holeSolo is unknown, but it frightened and rattled him enough that he apologized abjectly and immediately took down all his posts. Even with HanA**holeSolo’s total capitulation in hand, CNN went further and made clear their intent to totally squash this humble video editor should he ever again step a toe out of line. This was made explicit via Andrew Kaczynski in his July 5^th CNN article.

“CNN is not publishing “HanA**holeSolo’s name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same.”

“CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.”

Upon reading this I was seized by a mental vision of the Evil Emperor hissing from within the depths of his hood: ‘And we’ll be watching you, HanA**holeSolo…’

Insert evil chuckle.

Essentially, a lone citizen makes a political joke-one sure to offend at least SOME of the people he knows. He relies on the fact that “everyone posts all sorts of stuff without thinking about it all the time-unless you’re planning a political type of career and have to be sensitive to what you put on line”. This last quote, regarding the current posting habits of peers and colleagues, is from a mid-20’s IT professional employed by a large multinational technology firm. This may well represent the average attitude towards social media risk-taking.

Suddenly, HanA**holeSolo is being threatened by CNN, who announces that his true identity and his authorship of this joke, along with others he may have posted, will be broadcast to 100 million American households (as well as a Canadian and possibly international audience) if he EVER does something CNN dislikes again.

Legalities aside, it is beyond disturbing that a multi-billion dollar “news” agency is so thin-skinned and so malignant that they use their vast resources and worldwide reach to hunt down, frighten, and threaten this man because they didn’t like what he posted. So is it only CNN who can publish their viewpoints with the right to be free of personal reprisal? CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski in his article “How CNN found the Reddit user behind the Trump wrestling GIF” has witlessly documented bullying on a cosmic scale by CNN. The fact that he and CNN don’t recognize how unbelievably wrong their treatment of HanA**holeSolo is shows that they are light-years distant from the journalistic and moral standards they pretend to uphold.

Tom is right, social media has hazards as well as rewards, and we users need to educate ourselves to negotiate this world with less risk. But there is no excuse for CNN- slick, powerful, politically rabid. More than any attack upon the President or his administration, CNN’s efforts to expose, blackmail and squash a private citizen reveal the rot at its heart.