I commented to a co-worker today that it seemed like the U.S. getting a year older has brought with it a certain senility.
So here's the low-down. Some guy made a gif where they superimposed the CNN logo on someone during a WWF appearance by Trump, and it shows Trump pummeling them. El Presidente then retweeted the image from his personal account and @POTUS. This is presumably in reference to CNN having retracted a story about Trump campaign ties to Russia.
The reddit user in question turns out to be very racist. CNN was apparently pissed off, and tracked down the user. Meanwhile, the user writes an apology for the whole thing, which is later removed. The user has 86ed his account since all this as well.
What has most people rather disturbed is this bit from CNN's story on the issue:
- 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.
(Emphasis mine). It's been widely viewed as a threat, while some have kind of seen it as a reap-what-you-sow kind of thing.
I understand both points. The anonymity of the internet is part of the reason people can be so toxic on it. That said, there's a certain creepiness in the idea of people being outed for unpopular opinions. So I overall come down on the "CNN is out of line" side, but it's not a slam dunk.
Discuss.
According to Buzzfeed, CNN may have found the wrong gif that Trump tweeted about.
I'm torn on this one too. I've seen people argue that this could happen to anyone, so it's a threat to everyone. But could it? If you decided to troll reddit, would you give enough identifying information in your post history to allow people to narrow you down to one person? This is how CNN found him. I'm not sold that most people who troll Reddit leave that many identifying clues about themselves in their post history. People are really focusing in on the idea that CNN reserves the right to publish the person's details. While I can see why it comes across poorly in hindsight, after the apology was made, CNN didn't know that part when they wrote it. What if the troll was emboldened by the claim that CNN wouldn't publish the troll's information and started a campaign against them? CNN might not want to be held to the statement that they're not going to reveal the troll's identity if the troll led a campaign to publish all of the personal information of CNN staff. The campaign against CNN was started by someone anyway. Looking back at another instance of outing on Reddit, when violentacrez was outed, I remember wondering about the difference between doxing and investigative journalism. People seemed to feel that the outing was ok with voilentacrez since it was investigative journalism in that case. In this case, there seem to be other factors in play. From my understanding, neither troll had done anything illegal, but the hate from the Reddit community was much bigger for one than the other. Both the troll and CNN got caught up in the spider's web that Trump threw. Coming out of that unscathed is just a matter of luck and timing.The apology came after CNN's KFile identified the man behind "HanAholeSolo." Using identifying information that "HanAholeSolo" posted on Reddit, KFile was able to determine key biographical details, to find the man's name using a Facebook search and ultimately corroborate details he had made available on Reddit.
Within hours, personal information for multiple CNN staffers and their family members -- alongside images and gifs of individuals with CNN superimposed over their faces being shot in the head -- appeared in the comments of the posting.
Thankfully the only remotely unique thing my browser came back with is the HTML canvas, which is spoofed every read by an add-on :) It's really not that hard. I just use adBlock, Ghostery, and Canvas Spoofer.
This isn't really a good enough justification to me. "People will be mean on the Internet" excuses very little. Why I have such a problem is because of how dangerous this is for freedom of speech. It's all well and good to say "it's okay to out a racist" or "it's okay to out a guy posting creepy pictures of girls." But what happens when we start outing people who criticize Trump? Given how violent his supporters can be, I can understand not wanting to say some of that stuff under your own name. Doubly so if you're in a position of authority or prominence. I think CNN's actions, if not condemned, run a serious risk of chilling expression.What if the troll was emboldened by the claim that CNN wouldn't publish the troll's information and started a campaign against them?
I take it you don't mean legal freedom of speech. There's no government entity involved in this. As for colloquial freedom of speech on the internet, that opens up a whole can of worms. In a general sense, anyone has the power to out anyone else. The platform that it's on has the power to broadcast that information as widely, if not more widely, than a cable news network. Will there be rules on anyone outing anyone else? Will news organizations be held to a higher standard of NOT investigating people's backgrounds? Will CNN be held to a different standard than even the rest of the other journalists? Then there's the line between investigative reporting and outing. Where does that get drawn? I remember the case where someone posted on their Facebook account a picture of them holding up a dead cat with an arrow in its head. People found out her workplace and had her fired within a couple days. Her name and personal details were printed. Should news organizations have printed her personal information? In this particular case, CNN declined to post personal details. When some people saw the reservation to print personal details as blackmail, CNN clarified that it meant that the reservation wasn't contingent on the apology, but that the statement that personal details wouldn't be printed wasn't a blanket statement. From the comments I've seen, very few people took that at face value. On the other side, CNN's staffer's were outed with personal details of their families. That it was done got press attention as well. That seems to be getting a lot less censure, or maybe the censure is assumed. For the most part, I don't see people who criticize Trump who are also trolling with views they don't really hold. Most of them seem sincere in their criticism. And many of them are getting punished for their views. Like the woman who worked in a bank that a republican congressman told the owner of the bank that this woman was against him. She lost/left her job. In these very divisive times, there's lots of condemnation to go around. Besides being ineffective, condemning CNN is inconsistent to me. I reserve the right to condemn CNN at a later time If I don't like what they do, though.
Will Reddit do a thing? Or maybe, what thing will Reddit do? CNN + Reddit = admin blog post saying "we've learned a lot and taken action to correct..." I think CNN is out of line. The gif is nothing. Trump is a moron for the tweets, but that's nothing new and not a reason to track down a user. The user is a racist. If CNN wants to oust racist people on the internet, great, but that isn't what they were doing here.
Three thoughts. Situations like this, show why, even if you're anonymous, it's important to try and be as civil as possible. You never know what will happen. Worse things have likely been said and done about CNN, FOX, MSNBC, and so many other companies on the internet. The only reason CNN seems to be freaking out is because it involves Twitter and the President and I don't fucking know. Seriously. Have you guys seen the internet? Holy shit, some places on it are goon central. This is blackmail on CNN's part.