This was undoubtedly an act of journalistic malpractice that would be condemned and admonished for years following the incident, fueling conversations among mainstream publications, and media experts, on what should and shouldn’t be published, not only for ethical, but, moral standards, as well. What happened to Bartman was doxxing 101, even in 2003, followed by endless amounts of harassment, and would be an equally horrible act of injustice, if it took place in 2019, as well. It was also a cruel act on a man, who did nothing wrong, and only wanted to catch a ball at a baseball game, something that has been going on for endless years. So, if people want to see an example of harassment, after being doxxed, Steve Bartman is a perfect example of this, and hopefully, nobody has to go through what he did, especially in a day and age, where revealing someone’s identity is much easier than it was more than a decade and a half ago.

What Occurred With Me

With all that being said, I had my own incident on Twitter recently, which sparked a lot of controversy, because I took part in what some people have described as “doxxing” and “harassment,” with multiple different sides having their own opinions on the matter, and many of those sides misrepresenting what actually occurred.

On Tuesday, February 25, Bernie Sanders had a CNN town hall, which was being moderated by host Wolf Blitzer, who fielded questions from the audience to be asked of the 2020 Presidential candidate. As I was live-tweeting the town hall, one of the first questions asked of Sanders was from a young lady, whose name was displayed at the bottom of the screen, and she asked: “As we saw in the 2018 midterms, the Democratic Party has become more female, more racially diverse and younger in age. How can a voter like me feel confident in your ability to represent the party, especially given that your response to sexual harassment allegations during your campaign is that you were ‘a little bit busy running around the country, trying to make the case to be elected as President.’”

In that moment, I felt this question was extremely biased and unfair, so I tweeted the following:

That was my first visceral reaction, which I usually have, when I see something that I don’t like, and if you watch the clip, Sanders didn’t agree, because he rightfully pointed out that the quote was taken out of context from the latter part of an interview on CNN. Nevertheless, the town hall came, and went, until it was rehashed, again, on social media by various people.

About nine hours later, I discovered a video tweeted out of the young lady asking the question, where this person actually revealed that she works for a powerful lobbying firm in Washington, D.C., and I responded to this tweet with the following:

Clearly, as much as I despised the unfairness of the question, initially, I was even more upset that it seemed this person may have potentially used their connections from working for a lobbying firm in Washington to get an opportunity to ask this question. Not to mention, the fact that CNN didn’t disclose her employment status.

Just to add a little context to my tweet: As an Iranian-American, whose parents were born in Iran, and being around that culture, the kind of people I have seen have mostly been rich, spoiled and entitled, so my flippant characterization of this young lady was, obviously, not me knowing anything about her, but going based on my own real-life experiences, and also being displeased with the framing of her question. And these aren’t just the characteristics of Iranian females, but also, Iranian males. As a kid in high school, and in my early 20s, I was also called spoiled and rich, at times, a notion I strongly rejected, especially since I lived a middle-to-upper class lifestyle, with parents who had hard-working jobs all of their lives, and periods of unemployment, and couldn’t even afford to send me to an out of state school, let alone somewhere prestigious. However, this young lady from Denver, Colorado, was lucky enough to go to school at American University on the other side of the country, so I found that to be interesting, coupled with the absurd framing of her question.

As far as my tweet goes, did I mean it literally? No, of course not, because not every individual is cut from the same cloth, so, in that moment, I meant it in a very derisive fashion of how I perceive some of my fellow Iranians of being. I was also pretty upset to see someone of Iranian ethnicity asking a question, where they ignore the reality of the allegations of sexual harassment on Bernie Sanders’ campaign, and conveniently fail to take issue with sexual harassment allegations against top aides working for Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton. So why should Sanders’ campaign be asked this, but not other politicians, who happen to be females? It should also be noted that Sanders addressed these sexual harassment allegations, meeting with the victims, and listening to their concerns. It’s odd that the young lady failed to point this out, though. I would have expected better from Iranians, especially on an educational level.

About seven hours after my tweet, where I responded derisively to the young lady, I watched the video of the question she asked, once more, and noticed her name at the bottom of the screen, so I was curious if she had any social media presence, especially since she worked for a powerful lobbying firm in D.C., which means she might be known pretty prominently among D.C. establishment circles (it turns out she’s only an intern). Before I even delved into finding out who she was, I typed her name into the twitter search bar. Immediately, a bunch of tweets popped up, where some Progressives I know were admonishing her as a CNN plant, while earlier tweets directed at her (which appeared to be just after the town hall finished) were tweeting at her with praise for her question of Sanders. I chimed in on several of the comments, where she was being praised, and questioned her role in the lobbying firm she works for, but also why she didn’t acknowledge that Sanders directly addressed, the allegations made from several campaign employees, and attempted to fix any issues that had taken place, before launching his next Presidential run.

Since her place of employment, and subsequent opportunity to be able to ask a question at a nationally televised town hall event, became a topic of conversation among Progressive circles, especially those of whom are critical of the bias of news channels, like CNN, I was curious who she really was. After typing her full name into Google, which (once again) appeared at the bottom of the screen in the televised CNN town hall, the first page of search results showed several links to public social media platforms, which she has accounts for.

The first thing I found was what appeared to be her Twitter profile photo. After clicking on it, nothing came up, because it seems she had either deleted the profile, or changed the name. Moving onto the next search result, it showed that she had an Instagram account, which she either deleted or changed the name, as well. Next, I found her Facebook account, where she had changed the full name. That was the extent of what I found on Google. After going back to Twitter, and referring to the search of her name I had done on that platform, I clicked on the tweets replying to her, which showed people replying to her old Twitter handle. When I clicked on that, it brought me to her account, where the name was changed, and the account was protected.

I did a screenshot of all these public social media accounts, and tweeted it out, followed by some tweets, mocking how she was hiding herself from the public:

In retrospect, I didn’t actually realize how much attention she had received for her question at the town hall (other than the discovery of her employer), and I put the screenshots out there for my followers to see, because it was interesting how she was trying to hide herself, all of a sudden. If I had known that there was a chance of her possibly receiving some kind of harassment, or stalking, I would have never posted anything.

The Reaction and Subsequent Backlash

Eventually, what I had done received a lot of backlash from both Centrists and Progressives on Twitter, many of them accusing me of “doxxing” and “harassment”:

Those are just some of the tweets from more prominent accounts directed at me, not including replies, which I didn’t really bother addressing, because there were so many of them.

I even got tweeted at by Josh Orton, who is, apparently, a Senior Adviser to Bernie Sanders, and he very politely made his point:

There was even someone that responded to a tweet by another Leftist, rejecting and mocking the idea that the young lady from the town hall was doxxed in any way. Ironically, this turned out to be someone that took me to task for showing the public social media of the young lady, so I called them out:

Of course, this person would obviously claim that what I did went a step too far, even though, as I will prove in a moment, no doxxing or harassment actually took place on my part.

Setting The Record Straight

A s for the angry tweets shown above, keep in mind, these people were accusing me of “doxxing” and “harassment,” which is absurd and factually inaccurate. You can have your opinions of what different terms mean, but these are universally defined terms, which people can easily look up. Let’s go over them.

To reiterate, the definition of dox is, as follows:

(Credit: Dictionary.com)

According to the dictionary definition, doxxing is publishing someone’s “private personal information.” There was absolutely ZERO information I tweeted/published that was private or personal about the young lady. Every profile that she has on social media is public. If it was private, then she would only authorize certain people to be allowed to find her. The way social media works is you can hide your accounts, or even let people see certain details about you on your profiles. For example, on some websites, such as Instagram, your picture, user name, first name and bio can ONLY be shown, if you want. It depends on how they have their settings set up.

Next, I was accused of taking part in “harassment.” Is that what actually happened? Let’s take a look.

So, the definition of harassment is, as follows:

Credit: Dictionary.com

So how exactly did I harass the young lady from the town hall? Did I message her on Facebook? Instagram? Twitter? Nope. I found those public social media accounts, but I never once thought about messaging her, because that’s not something I do to someone I don’t know, especially when I see they’re trying not to be found, so I never even considered messaging her. Also, as you can see in the angry tweets directed at me (some are threads, so you might have to dig through them a little bit), they accuse me of “harassment,” because they claim I encouraged my followers by posting the screenshots, in the first place. Not only is that an arbitrary thing to accuse someone of, but there is no way you can prove it happened, unless there’s evidence. Otherwise, they’re just liars. Additionally, after noticing all the attention she was getting, I sent out TWO tweets (one is quote-tweeting and the other a reply) that specifically referenced my tweet with the screenshots, where I explicitly told my followers NOT to harass the young lady:

Both tweets got plenty of attention, from likes and (angry) replies, so nobody can deny that I said this, and plenty of those people know I said it. Also, if I was “harassing” the young lady, why did I NOT contact her, and also encourage my followers NOT to harass her? Basically, there is NO evidence that I contacted her, and there IS evidence that I told other people NOT to contact her.

Case closed.

After going at it with a bunch of those angry people (replying to my tweets about the young lady from the town hall) for about an hour or two, I had to make my account private, then I began to see my follower count plummet, because I mostly got unfollowed, or blocked, by many Leftists, who felt that my actions had gone too far.

I did get a few tweets from people, who disagreed with what I did, but gave what I felt were helpful and objective observations, instead of just visceral hatred and anger. This was one of them:

I’ll admit, that realization of being despised by a bunch of people, even those I was closely affiliated with, was pretty jarring, and I almost considered just getting off of social media for a while, if not, permanently. I thought I wouldn’t care about the hatred from people, who already despised me, but it probably didn’t help my psyche, either.

Ultimately, I decided to stay on Twitter, especially after receiving an outpouring of support from people that were following me, and have been cool with me for years on the platform, who said I did nothing wrong, and that there was nothing for me to apologize or feel sorry about. A few people even stated that what I posted was an act of investigative journalism, where I uncovered information about someone that was public, and available to anyone that knows how to use Google.

As I mentioned before, I studied Journalism for many, many years at the community college and university level (I was in school for way too long), so I knew what guidelines I had to follow. Not only did I never have any intention to publish personal information about the young lady, but I didn’t even know anything personal about her. Even if I had found out her home address or phone number, there was no way I was going to publish it, because I know what my boundaries are.

The people that despise me probably think I’m an evil person, who would have published anything I got my grubby hands on. They can think that, but there is nothing that indicates I would do that, nor have I ever done it.

My History of Opposing Doxxing

I also have gone on record to oppose the doxxing of celebrity figures (even those I disagree with), such as Tucker Carlson, who had protesters outside of his home, yelling various threatening language at him, even though he wasn’t home, while his wife allegedly was:

As you can see above, I disagreed with these tactics, and got a lot of heat for it from fellow Leftists, with people actually accusing me of being a “Nazi sympathizer.”

The point is, I have a history of opposing doxxing, so if I oppose it for someone I disagree with, why would I want it to happen to other people I disagree with, too?

I’m someone that thinks very objectively, and I always wonder what would happen if someone showed all of my personal information out to the world. That’s why I refuse to doxx people, regardless of what terrible things they may have done to me, and when people accuse me of doing it, I take it very personally.

If people refuse to believe this, and just want to judge me, based on this one situation, where doxxing didn’t even take place, let alone harassment, then you’re purposely being a smear merchant, or you just don’t know what those terms are.

Actual Cases of Doxxing (Which Were Richly Deserved)

When it comes to doxxing in the current digital age, where people are exposed for their crazy, absurd rants in public, it’s typical for their exploits to be posted all over the internet and social media.

Consider the story of Aaron Schlossberg, a lawyer from New York City, who was standing in line to purchase food at a restaurant, and after discovering that some of the food servers behind the counter were speaking Spanish, he went insane, and demanded that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) come and arrest them, because he assumed they were illegal immigrants:

Following his racist tirade, Schlossberg was exposed to the whole country, and rightfully condemned for his actions. Just like any other person that goes into the public square, he put himself out there, and chose to bring attention to himself, which got him recorded on cell phone video, and even ended up affecting his employment status at his law firm. It got so bad for Schlossberg that the Google page for his employer got flooded with negative reviews, and he even had a disciplinary grievance filed against him by the New York state court system.

If that example of public doxxing isn’t enough, check out the video below, where a woman berated a family celebrating their daughters’ one-year old birthday:

As you can see in the clip above, which is a news report from “Inside Edition,” they brought up multiple other examples of various individuals berating innocent civilians (many of them kids), and calling the cops for no legitimate reason. Many of them were even given catchy nicknames, like #BarbecueBecky, #PermitPatty, etc.

Here are a few more examples, which I discovered, just from doing a YouTube search:

The laundry list of people caught on camera, and shown on social media, is endless. Again, this has nothing to do with whether or not someone deserves to be caught on camera, and recorded, but it’s more important to accept the fact that anybody in public puts themselves in a situation to be exposed, regardless of who they are, and what they did.

Doxxing Isn’t What Some People Claim It Is

When it comes to the matter involving the young girl, who asked a question of Bernie Sanders at the CNN town hall, while she didn’t do anything particularly offensive (although, it depends who you ask), she was out in public, she was shown on camera, and whether or not it was on purpose, she brought attention onto herself, regardless of being positive or negative. As I mentioned earlier, she also works for a powerful D.C. lobbying firm, which undoubtedly has influence on political policy, and she just happened to get an opportunity to ask a question on national television. That is very convenient.

So even when all these people in public are put on blast for doing something in public, why do people come to the defense of this young lady, when her identity is revealed, and her public social media is made… um, public? Maybe, because she asked a question of Bernie Sanders, which people, who despise Sanders, approved of, and they jump at the chance to defend her right away. In other words, the whole matter is politically motivated, because the Jewish Socialist has to get taken out by everyone that hates him, and what he stands for.

Furthermore, imagine if the recent CNN town halls, featuring Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar, had questions from a bunch of people that worked for Bernie Sanders’ “Our Revolution” organization, or “Justice Democrats” (a group created by Sanders allies and activists), and their affiliations weren’t disclosed. Would the people supporting those candidates let it go and not take issue with the lack of transparency? In fact, I can almost guarantee they would be doing everything they can to figure out who those people were, and Googling their names, because they want to expose them.

A Fake Example of Doxxing

In an interesting final piece of the puzzle to this so-called “doxxing” controversy, Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian of “The Young Turks,” covered the questions asked by those audience members at the CNN town hall, including the young lady, and identified the company she’s interning for:

Following that segment, which aired on the February 26 broadcast of “The Young Turks,” a self-described “Feminist author,” named Jessica Valenti, responded to a tweet from TYT’s Twitter account, where they promoted their segment discussing CNN’s failure to disclose who participated in the CNN town hall.

Valenti lashed out, with the same strawman argument that was lobbed against me, then continued to go back and forth with Kasparian, who responded to her:

Using Valenti’s logic, where she takes issue with how TYT “plastered this woman’s name and location across the screen,” then CNN shouldn’t have posted her full name, where she’s originally from and where she goes to school, too. Of course, Valenti takes the fearmonger and straw manning to a new level, claiming, “Anyone who wants to accost her only needs to google map it.” Again, does that mean CNN should get the same criticism, because they disclosed her hometown and her university?

Just like my situation, where I posted the young lady’s public social media, TYT and many others posted other public information about her, which anyone can find, even if they have a rudimentary knowledge of how to use the internet. So the outrage from people accusing people, like me, and other Leftists, of “doxxing” and “harassment” either don’t now what those words mean, or they are just lying to falsely lob baseless accusation at random people on social media.

Conclusion

A s for the young lady, whose public social media accounts I put out there, and exposed to my followers, I will be using your full name (not including my tweets that show it) to apologize to you:

Shadi Masab,

I sincerely apologize to you, if my actions of showing your social media accounts lead to ANY kind harassment or stalking you have suffered. That was not my intention, whatsoever. I would also like to publicly apologize, on behalf of all of my followers, as well as supporters of Bernie Sanders, if they ended up committing harmful acts against you, because of what I did. Nobody deserves to suffer through any kind of harassment or stalking, which is why I never encouraged it. In fact, I discouraged my followers from taking part in anything remotely close to harassment or stalking of you. I hope you accept my apology, and if you don’t, I will not hold it against you. I just hope that your privacy isn’t gone and you are safe from any bad actors.

Sincerely,

Kevin Ehsani