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From CNN's writeup on how they managed to "dox" an individual who posted a GIF of President Trump wrestling a CNN logo:
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.
For those that have not seen the GIF or video, it rose to prominence after this tweet by Trump. This story is being predictably split down partisan lines, but this raises major questions about freedoms in the internet age. This is a company which is part of one of world's largest and most powerful media conglomerates threatening to engage in an action knowing it would likely result in harm to an individual because they found a silly video clip about them distasteful.
To put this into perspective, imagine if an organization such as Fox News or Breitbart chose to track down and "dox" any of the countless individuals posting numerous anti-Trump memes. And they then threatened to publish this information unless said individual apologized and promised to stop posting memes. This may already be illegal under coercion laws in the US, but is time for the rights (or lack thereof) of anonymity and privacy in the digital world to be clearly codified?
takyon: A reporter for BuzzFeed, CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski's former employer, compared the HanAssholeSolo GIF to the video tweeted by the President and found some differences, suggesting that it was altered by someone else before reaching the President or his aides (including the addition of a sound track). In other words, someone out there actually responsible for catching the President's attention may have gone unidentified, and the Reddit user likely uploaded only the initial version of the infamous GIF. The editing is acknowledged in the second paragraph of CNN's story.
Kaczynski has denied threatening anyone and says that the Reddit user called him and agreed that he had not been threatened by Kaczynski or CNN. He says that the "reserves the right to publish his identity" line from the CNN story has been misinterpreted, and that "It was intended only to mean we made no agreement w/the man about his identity". Kaczynski has also denied the widespread notion that the Reddit user was 15 years old, saying that "HanAssholeSolo is an adult and not 15 which people have spread".
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 06 2017, @06:10AM (4 children)
So Sanders, Trump, and Gandhi walk into a bar... the interesting thing is that they'd mostly agree on just about everything. It's just those 10% of topics that drives us to complete and utter distaste for one another.
I try to see things from the opposite of my own personal perspective so much as possible and it really emphasizes how much we're all squares labeling anybody who disagrees with us rectangles. And that wins the award for most awkward analogy of the year. What I mean is that we really all want the exact same thing. But instead of seeing things through this lens we turn people who disagree with us into something different than people. And those people, in turn, do the exact same thing to us.
This is how systems like slavery managed to propagate themselves. Any human of good conscience would see 'owning' another human as something in no way reasonable. So the solution people came up with was to convince themselves that they weren't human - they were just property. And that's the problem. We are extremely good at cognitive dissonance and lying to ourselves. Obviously everybody knew slaves were still people, but humans have this ability to convince themselves of untruths pretty easily. The same thing is also true of war. The first training for any soldier is dehumanization of the opponent, and again we're really really good at this.
This is something I think we are going to, sooner or later, have to overcome. Bad actions are bad regardless of the justification or target. If it's not clear the action is bad then swap the aggressor into somebody you dislike and the 'victim' into somebody you do like and see if it still seems like a reasonable behavior.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 06 2017, @12:03PM (3 children)
It started very promising, but I couldn't find the punchline after.
Something like "And Gandhi says..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 06 2017, @12:44PM (1 child)
Yes, given the fact that Trump does not drink, he must be at the bar to make a deal.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 06 2017, @03:38PM
The others wanted a drink so Trump went in to grab a waitress.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Sulla on Thursday July 06 2017, @03:07PM
I read Gaddafi instead of Gandhi, I think Gaddafi would have been funnier.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam