[throwaway077445]

I love how being contacted by a salesman that is acting accordingly to the terms of the contract he accepted is BAD! but publishing a private message without consent and without obfuscating name and surname is RIGHT!

Some devs have complete disconnect from reality.

(ofc he screams #censorship)

[jackson1442]

I personally have no qualms publicly posting corporate solicitations on the internet. Had it been a message of personal nature, it would be an entirely different story.

Regardless, it seems abundantly clear that this is his _job_, and he is not at fault for following the directions of his corporate overlords. No one's saying to go trash his house, and all the information he posted (name, photo) is publicly attached to his linkedin profile that is accessible to any authenticated LinkedIn user.

[015a]

Agreed; while redacting the name and photo would be the cordial thing to do, I don't believe these actions warrant a ban. There is a difference between posting the name of someone who didn't make an effort to be public, and the name of someone who has a public profile on a public social network (Linkedin) in the course of an unsolicited communication.

Think it through for a second; if he had, instead of posting the name and avatar of the user in the screenshot, at-tagged the sales rep's Twitter account; would he have gotten banned? I think not. That's totally normal behavior on Twitter; it happens a billion times every day. And its exactly the same thing.

Twitter has, in the past, left Trump's account up for far, far worse offenses. They need to get their act together. The word I'm hearing around Wall Street is that Twitter's moderation strategy is one of the bigger reasons why the company is so undervalued, and investors are becoming concerned that there's too much Emotion, not enough Process, in their decision making, well, process. Its a critical thing to get right in a social media platform; too little and you get Parler or russian election interference, too much and it becomes unusable. Twitter is getting it wrong; very very wrong.

[fireball_blaze]

He definitely should have blurred out the name of the salesperson in the original image.

[ubermonkey]

Nope, not morally. Once you send me a message, it's mine. I can tell anybody I want you sent me a message. I can post it publicly if I want.

[young_unixer]

> Once you send me a message, it's mine

Only at the most primitive level of morality. Over that basic layer, I'd still consider how the publication of the message may affect the other person.

For example: Do you think it's morally OK to publish nudes that your partner sends you? I don't think it should be illegal, but only a massive asshole would publish their (ex) partner's nudes.

[ubermonkey]

These concerns do not come into play with the sort of communication being discussed.

If you send me unsolicited commercial messages, I'm gonna feel no compunction about publicizing that you're a spammer.

[temac]

Morally, to each their own. But legally it certainly depends. In France you can't for private conversations, for example. I don't know if this one would qualify.

[asien]

In fact no. Once I send you a message it’s neither yours or mine, it’s owned by the platform. Thus if the platform does not allow for « sharing » without consent you must follow their instructions.

Also if you believe privacy is a right, you should ask that person before sharing this digital content he created that has hid identity in it, otherwise you should hide it.

For a paper letter it’s obviously different, once you received it it’s obviously yours.

[dredmorbius]

The object may be yours. Copyright in the contents unless specifically assigned elsewhere (in many service agreements a grant but not an assignment is made to the service operator), remains with the author.

Fair-use affirmative defence (under US law), fair dealing (UK),or equivalents elsewhere, may apply. Infringement claims, if any, would rest on thin grounds. Under the specific circumstances here, privacy claims likewise.

There is no copyright protection in the fact of communication. Nor in the details of who did so.

Generally I'd argue for a legitimate public interest in sharing the communication in cases such as this.

[richardfey]

That's harder to accomplish on a video

[devmunchies]

taking a cue from Cancel Culture. Wants to inflict as much public shame and probably wants this rep to lose his job.

In fact, by publishing his name you're giving the company an opportunity to throw him under the bus. It redirects culpability. Microsoft and Canonical should be the only focus.