The above was Kelly’s first tweet posted on his parody account in response to the extended closure of Milne Library (Courtesy of Isaiah Kelly).
A Geneseo student’s Twitter account, intended to parody announcements regarding recent events on campus, was allegedly taken over by school administrators in an attempt to put an end to the account’s impersonation of real campus matters. On Jan. 29, Twitter responded to the administration’s claims that there was a profile impersonating their official Twitter account by handing over control of the account @SUNYGenseeo to the Geneseo administration, namely Digital Coordinator Betsy Harris.
The parody account was created mid-January by communication major sophomore Isaiah Kelly in response to Geneseo announcing that Milne Library would be closed for the semester due to the presence of asbestos. It was Kelly’s tweet on Jan. 11, claiming that the library would actually remain open and face masks would be sold to students as a protective measure, that first alerted the Geneseo administration to the account’s existence.
Interim Chief Communications Officer David Irwin explained that his office first learned about the account on Jan. 12. “We started to see consistent traffic about the Milne Library tweet that started to get our attention,” he said. “We started to get some responses from parents [and] students [asking] ‘is this true?’ ‘Is this accurate?’ We were just kind of concerned … and started kind of digging into this situation.”
Kelly says he set up the account after seeing the success of other, non-Geneseo related parody accounts on Twitter and wanting to poke fun at the library closure. “To make light of the situation that we didn’t have a library, I made the SUNYGenseeo account. Everything was carbon copy [of Geneseo’s official Twitter account], except for the tag [the username following the @ sign]. I had the bio copied in there, the cover photo, the profile photo. Of course, not the tweets and followers but I think everything else was pretty much copied,” he said.
It was once Irwin’s office noticed that @SUNYGenseeo’s tweets were misleading members of the community that they decided to contact Twitter, filing an impersonation report, found on Twitter’s Impersonation policy webpage. Irwin’s office operated under the belief that @SUNYGenseeo was using Geneseo’s intellectual property without permission.
Four days after setting up the account, Kelly received an email from Twitter alerting him of the fact that his account violated their impersonation policy. In order to fall back under compliance with the impersonation guidelines, Kelly added “NOT” to the Twitter account’s name. Over the next few weeks, Kelly removed and added “NOT” to the account’s name several times.
On Jan. 29, Kelly received another email from Twitter, this time indicating that the email address attached to the @SUNYGenseeo account had been changed and friends started messaging him that his parody account had been hacked. The account now had a gray profile picture and all four original tweets on the account were deleted.
The new email address for the impersonation account belonged to Harris. Harris directed multiple requests for comment to Irwin and the Geneseo media team.
According to Kelly, the first time he became aware that the school had any problem with his parody account was when he received the email from Twitter, informing him that a Geneseo administration member was now in control of the account.
“I emailed Betsy Harris who was the person that the email was
changed to. I emailed [the school] first and [Harris] said we could meet up on Friday [Jan. 31],” Kelly said. “It wasn’t even like a reprimand or even like a punishment. The school itself has yet to send me a single email other than [Harris].”
Geneseo administration addressed the situation publically for the first time on Jan. 30 via a thread on Twitter, responding to allegations that they had gone into Kelly’s email to take control of @SUNYGenseeo.
The statement said in part, “The latest buzz on Twitter is that we hacked a student’s Twitter account and took it down because it was making fun of Geneseo. We want to be clear: We did not. Twitter determined the account violated their policy on account impersonation and turned access over to us.”
Geneseo administration admitted to deleting tweets that they felt were being confused as actual administration communication, as well as changing the profile picture to a grey photo. A list labeled “Monitor” was created on @SUNYGenseeo while it was under the control of Harris, tracking only tweets from Kelly’s personal account. Harris said the monitoring list was a mistake, according to Kelly.
When asked for clarification regarding the “Monitor” list, no member of the administration was able to provide a full explanation.
The Jan. 30 Twitter thread from the school’s official account went on to explain that they felt the fake account crossed the line of parody and was impersonating the official Geneseo account.
Despite taking control of and deleting material on a student’s media account, Geneseo doesn’t believe itself to have broken or violated any property or privacy laws. “We feel we were obligated to protect our rightful intellectual … property that was being misused,” Irwin said.
Twitter’s impersonation policy indicates that an account thought to be confusing or deceptive as another person, brand or organization is at risk of being permanently suspended by the site. Nowhere in the impersonation policy does it state that it will hand over an account that is found to be impersonating another.
In an email statement to The Lamron, a Twitter spokesperson said, “We made a mistake and should have suspended @SUNYGenseeo for impersonation. We’ve now done this.”
In response to being asked about what he felt should have happened to the account, Irwin said “I think it should have been deactivated.”
According to senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center Mike Hiestand, what Twitter did may have been illegal, considering a Twitter account can be viewed as property and it was allegedly handed over without the student’s permission. Hiestand called this a “civil wrong between Twitter and its user.”
Hiestand explained that Geneseo may also have infringed on Kelly’s first amendment rights, as they allegedly deleted and changed information on the Twitter account.
Hiestand equated this to “trash[ing] someone else’s property and destroy[ing] it.” He went on to conclude, “[there] are property rights in play and clearly a First Amendment violation.”
Kelly alleges that when he asked for photos of the conversation between Harris and Twitter, Harris claimed to have deleted them.
Irwin explained in an email statement, “We emailed Twitter Support and copied [Kelly] for the full transcript so he would see everything without any possible gaps in the conversation. It’s Twitter’s decision to share the full transcript and that’s fine with us.”
In the days following the incident, the school relinquished control of the account back to Kelly. Twitter, however, now has the account on “permanent suspension” status.
Overall, if given the chance to go back, Kelly says he would have made the parody-nature of the account more obvious from the beginning but doesn’t regret making the account or its subsequent tweets. He wishes too, however, that the school had contacted him earlier and that the situation didn’t have to escalate as it did.
The whole incident, he believes, is a larger symbol of student opinion surrounding the rocky start to the spring 2020 semester.
“I don’t think I’ve heard a single positive thing this semester; whether it be in the administration’s control or not,” Kelly said. “I think communication with their students is probably one of the worst things [administration] has right now. Everyone’s morale is low … [regarding] the college. This is probably the time to step it up.”
Students have rallied around Kelly and are heavily critiquing the Geneseo administration, mainly on social media. Many students have begun to make more parody accounts relating to the school.
In response to the situation, English creative writing and international relations double major senior DongWon Oh tweeted “Geneseo Admin worried about the [power of] a PARODY Twitter account when there are power outages and no library. Geneseo Admin, you’re worried about the wrong power, worry about electricity and the power of having a library.”
Oh’s sentiments are a common theme among the student body who feel the situation was handled poorly.
Economics major junior Michael Welch said he was surprised no campus-wide email was sent out about the situation and “I believe it speaks volumes about the administration that they would rather devote time to shutting down meme pages that contain harmless student expression than handling issues that are actually affecting students.”
Irwin indicated that the administration was aware of student opinion and needs, especially this semester. “We’re reaching out every day. We’re reaching out with information in our website, our events,” he said. He believes students are just looking for the truth and for communication on what is going to impact their lives and safety.