CNN threatens to expose the identity of a Reddit user after posting Trump wrestling meme

[dalekphalm]

The reason why people are "upset" (if you want to use that word - concerned, confused, worried, etc) about Trump's meme post is that he's the President of the US. He's supposed to act more professional then this. We're supposed to hold the President to a higher standard - but Trump, whether you love him or hate him, very rarely acts professionally.

 

Furthermore, a dox would mean posting all his personal info, including home address/phone/email, usually.

 

Posting his name only does not really constitute doxxing. It's little different from a news organization posting an article about any person who becomes renown for an action.

 

Personally, I do hope that CNN keeps this person's name private, simply because posting a meme in-and-of-itself should not warrant that. But if the person does other actions that would put him back in the spotlight, he has only himself to blame at that point.

 

If I were him? Keep a low profile, and maybe adopt a new online handle.

[Atmos]

I'll keep the rest of my involvement in this thread limited to this post.

This whole spiel, leaves me without words. I cannot effectively convey my utter disgust, anger, and resentment towards cnn for having the gall to threaten a private citizen if they didn't apologize for making a joke to their distaste. CNN has broken federal law, as was suggested at by Asange and many others by this move. What an utter and complete disgrace they have become, that they should stoop so low as to blow this whole situation out of the water.

 

Yes, trump is the president and should be expected to behave better than publish memes making fun of MSM under normal circumstances... however, when the MSM has nonstop published outright lies, made false claims unsupported by any substantial evidence, and tried over and over again to defame and deface the president on the grounds of what seem to be nothing but ideologically driven motivation, then the president absolutely has the moral standing to fire back at them for their egregious behavior. CNN is entirely at fault here, they acted out of malice, not journalistic 'integrity' to discover the truth behind a god damned joke.

[AlwaysFSX]

8 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

If you're going to be a racist asshole on the internet

Explain to me how that gif makes the creator a racist asshole. I would love to hear your explanation as to why.

[Steemax]

44 minutes ago, AlwaysFSX said:

Explain to me how that gif makes the creator a racist asshole. I would love to hear your explanation as to why.

All Trump supporters are automatically racist assholes.... haven't you heard? 

[Kobathor]

54 minutes ago, AlwaysFSX said:

Explain to me how that gif makes the creator a racist asshole. I would love to hear your explanation as to why.

Hank Green posted a screenshot of one of his Reddit posts where he uses "the N word" many times and talks down to minorities. It was on a satire subreddit that I forgot the name of, so it's probably just shitposting, but the vast majority of citizens don't really know what Reddit it, let a alone a "shitpost," so it would destroy his reputation.

 

I think the "destroy his reputation" part is where CNN really messed up threatening this guy. He could already press charges for coercion (if he presses charges at all, which definitely won't happen,) but he could also sue for defamation since he's probably a normal dude that's not terribly racist.

 

I highly doubt anything will go to court, and CNN lovers won't care at all, but it's still really messed up what they did to him for making a meme. A MEME! I think it's really funny though that people are making every GIF in existence bashing CNN, the slimy bastards they are.

[vetali]

1 hour ago, dalekphalm said:

We're supposed to hold the President to a higher standard - but Trump, whether you love him or hate him, very rarely acts professionally.

We should also hold the press to a higher standard, because they neither act professionally and this case shows. Surely not intentional, this is working in Trumps favor in exposing that. CNN fell for the bait. 

[CoolMarquis97]

Media violating laws, our president violating laws, everybody violating laws. Like the wise man named Drake once said, "What A Time To Be Alive". 

[Speedyv]

13 hours ago, SCHISCHKA said:

I cant say I care much for this person's racist and anti-semetic views but I enjoyed the CNN pro wresting video. MSM no longer has any ethics. They push out a lot of propaganda and they invent news. Journalists are suppose to observe and report. They are not suppose to take advantage of their platform to push their political views.

No different from getting the news straight from the Cheeto and his goons. 

[Tsuki]

9 hours ago, AlwaysFSX said:

Explain to me how that gif makes the creator a racist asshole. I would love to hear your explanation as to why.

that particular gif doesnt make him a racist asshole. his post history does(before his user was deleted)

[LAwLz]

Some of my thoughts.

 

0) I am not a legal expert so take what I say with a few shovels of salt.

 

1) I am fairly sure people on both sides will think completely irrationally regarding this because they dislike the other side. The left will try and justify this because they hate Trump and/or his supporters. The right will hate on this because they hate CNN and the left.

 

2) This is doxing. There is nothing in the definition of doxing which states that you need to post X amount of personal information. Doxing is defined as:

Quote

To publish the private personal information of (another person) or reveal the identity of (an online poster) without the consent of that individual.

That's it. The definition is not "post the home address of someone", nor is it "post the phone number".

The legal definition of personal information is:

Quote

“personal information” means information that identifies an individual, including an individual’s photograph, social security number, driver identification number, name, address (but not the 5-digit zip code), telephone number, and medical or disability information, but does not include information on vehicular accidents, driving violations, and driver’s status.

 

3) Doxing is not always illegal. It is illegal in some cases such as outlined in 18 U.S. Code § 119 (although that does only apply to some people). Those cases includes when the information is being used to intimidate or threaten some specific people (like a witness).

Posting the name in and of itself is totally legal. Names of individuals are posted all the time. It is the intention behind posting the name that determines if it is legal or not.

 

4) Blackmailing and extortion is illegal. You can NOT make a threat to publish someone's private information unless they do something, such as delete a post. That is against the law and should absolutely not be defended, even if the person is a racist.

 

5) I don't think we can say that CNN blackmailed him without knowing exactly what they said, and I don't know if that has been published anywhere.

 

6) You should never, ever think that something is justified because "that person was X" or "that person was Y". "He is a racist so he deserves it" is a terrible way of thinking, just like "he is gay so he deserves it" is a terrible way of thinking. Laws does not work like that.

That way of thinking just creates this tribal mentality of "us vs them", where you justify bad behavior against people you dislike. Just look at when people were celebrating that some guy was assaulted in live television because "he deserved it for his political views".

Him being a racist or not should have no impact on whether or not what CNN did was legal or illegal.

 

7) Even if this was legal, I think it is pretty shitty behavior. I mean, news outlets going after individuals for posting memes on reddit? Come on... How can anyone side with CNN when they are so pathetic?

Imagine if Trump started tracking down and posting the full names of people who uploaded compilations of his awkward handshakes. Would you think that was justified as well? I wouldn't. I would think it was distasteful.

 

8) It is because of reasons like this that Trump became president. Both sides are getting more and more extreme and divided all the time. Gone are the times of trying to find a middle-ground where everyone was somewhat happy. Now it's all or nothing. You either agree with me, or you're a subhuman who barely deserves to breath the same air as I do.

What the hell happened?

[Misanthrope]

I am more interested in the legal side of things here because we have 2 situations here

 

1) The press which enjoys explicit protection under 1A

2) The shitposter who is basically only hopeful his identity isn't made known, no legal protection.

 

In my (surely controversial) opinion, laws around the world need to change to address the right of an individual to his privacy and to anonymity. This couldn't have been foreseen in the 19th century where we couldn't even imagine the potential reach of telecommunications to come but at this point, I think that this concepts are fundamentals to encourage freedom of speech too.

[PlayStation 2]

I find it sincerely sad that CNN can't take an L. A president finally fires back on them and they melt down. To the point to where they threaten to dox someone because of a shitpost. 

[dalekphalm]

5 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Some of my thoughts.

 

0) I am not a legal expert so take what I say with a few shovels of salt.

 

1) I am fairly sure people on both sides will think completely irrationally regarding this because they dislike the other side. The left will try and justify this because they hate Trump and/or his supporters. The right will hate on this because they hate CNN and the left.

 

2) This is doxing. There is nothing in the definition of doxing which states that you need to post X amount of personal information. Doxing is defined as:

That's it. The definition is not "post the home address of someone", nor is it "post the phone number".

The legal definition of personal information is:

 

3) Doxing is not always illegal. It is illegal in some cases such as outlined in 18 U.S. Code § 119 (although that does only apply to some people). Those cases includes when the information is being used to intimidate or threaten some specific people (like a witness).

Posting the name in and of itself is totally legal. Names of individuals are posted all the time. It is the intention behind posting the name that determines if it is legal or not.

 

4) Blackmailing and extortion is illegal. You can NOT make a threat to publish someone's private information unless they do something, such as delete a post. That is against the law and should absolutely not be defended, even if the person is a racist.

 

5) I don't think we can say that CNN blackmailed him without knowing exactly what they said, and I don't know if that has been published anywhere.

 

6) You should never, ever think that something is justified because "that person was X" or "that person was Y". "He is a racist so he deserves it" is a terrible way of thinking, just like "he is gay so he deserves it" is a terrible way of thinking. Laws does not work like that.

That way of thinking just creates this tribal mentality of "us vs them", where you justify bad behavior against people you dislike. Just look at when people were celebrating that some guy was assaulted in live television because "he deserved it for his political views".

Him being a racist or not should have no impact on whether or not what CNN did was legal or illegal.

 

7) Even if this was legal, I think it is pretty shitty behavior. I mean, news outlets going after individuals for posting memes on reddit? Come on... How can anyone side with CNN when they are so pathetic?

Imagine if Trump started tracking down and posting the full names of people who uploaded compilations of his awkward handshakes. Would you think that was justified as well? I wouldn't. I would think it was distasteful.

 

8) It is because of reasons like this that Trump became president. Both sides are getting more and more extreme and divided all the time. Gone are the times of trying to find a middle-ground where everyone was somewhat happy. Now it's all or nothing. You either agree with me, or you're a subhuman who barely deserves to breath the same air as I do.

What the hell happened?

All valid points.

 

Certainly, I would be considered on the left (Socially left, fiscally moderate-left), and while I think Trumps actions are childish at best, and a total mockery of the institution of the President of the United States, I do agree that CNN is acting childish as well.

 

You made some good points about motivation. If CNN had simply posted the persons name saying "Hey our journalist investigation found this to be the person, using nothing but info he's already posted online publicly - here's a piece on it", that might be okay.

 

But they pretty much do threaten him in their article.

 

Generally I don't hate CNN nearly as much as the far right does. They make mistakes, but they're not the "straight up Fake News" that the far right keeps saying. But this was wrong. I hope the journalist behind this resigns willingly (And if not, he should be fired), and I also hope that CNN makes a public promise never to reveal his info, along with an apology to him.

 

Also, good pickup on the definition of doxxing. I certainly wouldn't be pleased if, say, Breitbart posted my name or info because they disagreed with something I said.

[Memories4K]

6 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

They make mistakes, but they're not the "straight up Fake News" that the far right keeps saying. But this was wrong. I hope the journalist behind this resigns willingly (And if not, he should be fired), and I also hope that CNN makes a public promise never to reveal his info, along with an apology to him.

Nah fam; this isn't the first time CNN has been caught in a lie. In fact, there have been so many times not accounting CNN's personal bias. Fake New Network, you can only fuck so many goats before the "Why am i known as the goat fucker?" line gets old. You're a goat-fucker now, ya dun memed yourself.

Before anybody says, "Wut about Faux News(Fox News)?" Yeah sure them too, not arguing that, but right now we're talking CNN and how ridiculous this situation is.

[dalekphalm]

4 minutes ago, Memories4K said:

Nah fam; this isn't the first time CNN has been caught in a lie. In fact, there have been so many times not accounting CNN's personal bias. Fake New Network, you can only fuck so many goats before the "Why am i known as the goat fucker?" line gets old. You're a goat-fucker now, ya dun memed yourself.

Before anybody says, "Wut about Faux News(Fox News)?" Yeah sure them too, not arguing that, but right now we're talking CNN and how ridiculous this situation is.

Do you have a source (non-partisan) that can verify your claims?

 

According to Politifact, they are "mixed". Not a great reputation, but definitely not the "they're total fake news all the time" that the far right is claiming.

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/tv/cnn/

 

According to this, they're either true or mostly true 53% of the time, half true 20% of the time, and false or mostly false 27% of the time.

 

Is that great? Definitely not.

 

Compared with Fox News, who is false or mostly false 60% of the time:

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/tv/fox/

 

Now, they don't have every news organization out there on their site, so it's hard to compare.

 

What would you consider a "truthful or mostly truthful" news organization? What standards are we holding CNN to that another group has reached or exceeded?

[LAwLz]

2 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Do you have a source (non-partisan) that can verify your claims?

 

According to Politifact, they are "mixed". Not a great reputation, but definitely not the "they're total fake news all the time" that the far right is claiming.

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/tv/cnn/

 

According to this, they're either true or mostly true 53% of the time, half true 20% of the time, and false or mostly false 27% of the time.

 

Is that great? Definitely not.

 

Compared with Fox News, who is false or mostly false 60% of the time:

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/tv/fox/

 

Now, they don't have every news organization out there on their site, so it's hard to compare.

 

What would you consider a "truthful or mostly truthful" news organization? What standards are we holding CNN to that another group has reached or exceeded?

PolitiFact is not meant to be used in that way. In fact, they even advice people to not use their website like that. Here is a quote from their website regarding their score cards:

Quote

The comparisons are interesting, but be cautious about using them to draw broad conclusions. We use our news judgment to pick the facts we’re going to check, so we certainly don’t fact-check everything. And we don’t fact-check the five network groups evenly.

[...]

Also, if a Fox News host appears on NBC and makes a claim that we fact-check, that rating would appear on the NBC page. In this case, it’s about the network that aired the content, not the person who said it.

 

What you also have to remember (which they hint at in the statement) is that PolitiFact suffers heavily from selection bias. They select and investigate things they think their readers will be interested in. That's why you end up with things like Fox being investigated by PolitiFact more than twice as often as CNN. Because people are more interested in knowing if Fox News are full of bullshit or not (or as you can see in PolitiFact's own statement, people they bring in to talk on their channel). PolitiFact are also free to choose whatever things they investigate.

 

There are other problems with PolitiFact too, like them checking things by proxy, checking the same thing multiple times and counting them as separate lies and the biggest problem. If you want some examples, this is a pretty telling one.

Source for top statement.

Source for bottom statement.

 

While those ratings might be somewhat accurate, it leaves a lot up to how you interpret things and people who see only one of those articles can be mislead.

 

 

My point is that:

1) You should not use PolitiFact to gauge how trustworthy a channel is. Not even PolitiFact thinks that's a good idea.

 

2) PolitiFact is not exactly great to begin with. It has a lot of issues and unless you actually go in and read the entire article very thoroughly, you will most likely end up being mislead. They sometimes put a lot of weight on details (or the lack of), or "implications" of statements, and those things affects the score quite a bit.

I can't find it right now, but one that made me react was a fact check on Trump claiming that Clinton sold 20% of US Uranium to Russia. PolitiFact rated it  mostly false partially because "what was sold was 20% of US production capacity, not uranium", which might be true but doesn't really take away from the point Trump was making.

 

 

Personally, I've just given up on MSM completely when it comes to politics. I mean, even if PolitiFact was a good tool for comparing them, it would still mean that about half of everything said on CNN was false. You're about as likely to be right by flipping a coin as you are making your mind up based on things said on CNN.

[Ithanul]

On 7/5/2017 at 6:57 PM, Monkey Dust said:

To side step the rights and the wrongs of this occurrence; This is a reminder that you are rarely as anonymous on the internet as you like to think, even without tech companies being forced to hand over your identity, security backdoors etc... Without explicitly stating them, most of us will give away, over a number of posts, our country of origin, possibly even the region of that country, ethnicity, age, region, class, education level, political alignment (if any), profession, and plenty more besides to anyone with experience in analysing such things. That 'profile' combined with cross-checking against what material is posted else where on other social media that matches the account you wish to identify can give a reasonably degree certainty about the identity of the individual in question. All from information you voluntarily put out there.

Yep.  I seen some stuff, stuff that really makes you rethink about posting info online.

 

There actually a class where, no joke, they print out all the info they can find online about you.  For most, it a pretty thick book.

Heck, I know a few sites that with only a name I find that person's address, previous addresses, relatives, and telephone number.  O, and its free to use (I actually had a peep at a Toyota dealership show me that one).

[RGProductions]

My political views are changing TBH. I agree with the left on most things over the right, but a lot of the left is just as dumb as a lot of the right, but the left can't seem to contain their stupidity as well as the right.

[PlayStation 2]

1 minute ago, RGProductions said:

My political views are changing TBH. I agree with the left on most things over the right, but a lot of the left is just as dumb as a lot of the right, but the left can't seem to contain their stupidity as well as the right.

You'd probably fall in line with the classical liberal category. I personally fall into right-wing libertarianism but it's not really that deep for me. If you're sane to debate and somewhat left-wing, you're probably in the classical liberal category.

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

You'd probably fall in line with the classical liberal category. I personally fall into right-wing libertarianism but it's not really that deep for me. If you're sane to debate and somewhat left-wing, you're probably in the classical liberal category.

Extremism on both sides (Far left and Far right - including "alt" for both) is just terrible, and they are ruining the political process in the western world.

[Shakaza]

25 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Extremism on both sides (Far left and Far right - including "alt" for both) is just terrible, and they are ruining the political process in the western world.

You don't say! The first US presidential election I get to participate in, and I'm ALREADY fed up with everything. The tweet wars, the posturing, the mud-slinging, the lying, the shady business, incompetent or outright BAD reporting, etc. I'm half tempted to just shut myself off from all of it, but I figure I need to keep up with current events. At this point, I care very little about what side of the political spectrum people are on. If you're reasonable and intelligent, you're good in my books. (In some cases, this seems almost impossible, because people get divided by the whole ingroup-outgroup biases that affect your perception of groups that are outside of yours, and it can taint a discussion based on preconceptions before it even begins. If people on both sides would realize this and try to adjust their attitude, it might help discussions from the get-go. I'm guilty of this too, of course.)

[SansVarnic]

Lulz CNN getting butthurt. 

[HunterSkater429]

Fuck CNN, fuck th3 media in general 

[Drak3]

On 7/5/2017 at 3:45 PM, CoolMarquis97 said:

Like the wise man named Drake once said, "What A Time To Be Alive"

Never said that. Stop spreading lies or I'll get CNN after you

[Teddy07]

That is why I quit following any news. All this big fuss about nothing.

Total waste of time!