Whose private life is it anyway?
B.C. candidate under fire for deleting tweets
VANCOUVER• Aware that the campaigns of many aspiring politicians have derailed because of social media skeletons, first-time Vancouver city council candidate Brandon Yan thought he was doing the sensible thing when he signed up for an app that helps delete old Twitter posts.
But in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t moment, the political neophyte is now facing backlash for that decision, accused on social media of lacking transparency and facing questions about what may be lurking in his past.
“I’m sitting here not knowing what’s happening,” Yan, 32, who works for a non-profit, told the National Post on Wednesday.
“I don’t have a team of people coaching me how to do these things. I’m doing the best to my ability.”
Once you’ve exposed your intimate ideas or opinions, it can be difficult, digital media experts say, to reclaim them — or stuff them back into a social media bottle.
“The internet has no delete button, so everything you decide to share online can and will have a perpetual life, and anyone who thinks they can erase every last vestige of their online activity is deluding themselves,” said Carmi Levy, a technology analyst based in London, Ont.
The internet is replete with headlines of political aspirants flattened by embarrassing or questionable content unearthed by opponents or media outlets.
Last year, three rookie candidates in the Nova Scotia election quit the race because of old social media posts.
One candidate had compared a date-rape drug to “women’s Viagra.” Another had made the comment that “in a world of breast implants, fast food and cheap beer, what’s not to love about being a man?”
The third candidate, who previously worked at an electronics store, had used the hashtags #downsyndrome and #stupidcustomers to refer to someone who had called the store with an annoying question.
In 2015, a federal Liberal candidate in Alberta was forced to step down and apologize for a tweet years earlier in which she told someone with whom she disagreed that “Your mother should have used that coat hanger.”
“While it would be nice if we could always have a ‘do-over,’ politics is unfortunately very unforgiving,” said Leslie Noble, a founding partner of StrategyCorp, an Ottawa-based consulting firm. “Social media has created an environment in which there is a permanent and highly accessible record which means mistakes or poor judgment hang around your neck forever.”
Yan, an active Twitter user since 2010, decided around the launch of his campaign to try out the free app Tweet-Delete that automatically deletes tweets after they’ve reached a certain shelf life.
What was he afraid of ?
“Mostly drunk tweets into the ether from when I was 22 (my alcohol tolerance is much lower now), some challenging mental health days, pictures of dogs, thoughts about cute boys on #Transit, probably some angry rants about things,” he later posted on Twitter.
Because of the app’s limitations, only a certain portion of Yan’s Twitter history ended up being removed — posts from Nov. 14, 2016 to July 15, 2018. Still, it didn’t take long for the Twitterverse to take notice.
“How can people trust you … to bring transparency to decision-making at @Vancouver city hall, when you started by hiding all your Twitter history?” one critic wrote.
“Past behaviour predicts future behaviour,” another wrote.
Levy said it is not a bad idea for people running for office to perform an audit of their social media history to avoid any surprise “time bombs.” But he advises against wholesale deletions.
“Summarily deleting your entire Twitter, Facebook or Instagram account is a drastic solution that may create more problems than it solves. It draws more attention to itself, and suggests the candidate may have something to hide,” he said.
Levy suggests more “precise tuning” — the “targeted removal of particularly objectionable posts” — because it isn’t as likely to raise eyebrows.
Renu Bakshi, a Vancouver-based communications consultant, agrees and recommends one additional step: be open about why you took that action.
“Use the opportunity to own up to your tweets, apologize if necessary, and then demonstrate your evolution as a person,” she said.
“In a crisis, you can recover your reputation faster if you are the first to report it. As the saying goes: “Tell it first, tell it fast, tell it all.”
Yan, who compares Twitter to road rage — “it’s not about having conversation, it’s about who can be more right” — appears to be taking the criticism in stride, joking earlier this week in a post aimed at his critics: “Please stand by: I can release my old school work from Grade 4.”