Yesterday here at RHM, Zeldink wrote up a post about a funny little weirdness that was going on in the Reds’ Twitter-verse. A guy using the handle @SeeHearTell was claiming to be at the winter meetings, reporting on Reds activity, and annoying Jamie Ramsey, which is always fun to watch because he so just so easy to rile up.

The first report, about Brandon Phillips going to the Yankees, did seem to be correct when news came out that it fell through. That could be a lucky guess, though; BP is flashy, expensive, and in the second half of his career–he just screams “Yankees.”

The second report about Homer Bailey and Brandon Phillips being traded to the Dodgers hasn’t come to fruition, but shortly after it was posted, suddenly the Reds sprang in to action to shut down the Twitter account, even though it had been active since December 6.

The Reds’ Director of Digital Media, Lisa Braun, says “This person pretended to work for the Reds & said he was right there in the meetings. MLB security issue.”

I don’t know what the real reason was why they targeted this Twitter account with such sudden and extreme prejudice, but I do know that “security issue” ain’t it. There are at least three glaringly obvious reasons this is complete and utter bullshit:

#1 – There is no security risk involved with someone claiming to be a Reds employee on Twitter
Show up to Great American Ball Park with a bright yellow security jacket and a badge on a lanyard? That is a security risk. You could march right in with a gun or let all your friends in with reasonably priced beer hidden in their backpacks.

Imply that you’re a Reds insider on Twitter? What precisely is going to happen? You can’t get access to anything on the strength of tweets. I’ll provide it: next time you’re pulled over and asked for your ID, offer to show that you can post to your Twitter feed instead as proof of your identity.

Reds reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer, @ctrent, defended the Reds’ actions by saying:

@BawLaw @lisabraun actually, no, they look like professionals. they look like a group that value their brand & integrity. you know, adults

— ctrent (@ctrent) December 13, 2013

@ctrent was standing up for his friend, but he was also illuminating the much more likely reason for taking down the account: protecting the brand. But brand misuse is a question of intellectual property, definitely not a question of security.

#2 – Lisa Braun said herself that’s not why the account went down
Before she got cold feet and started deleting tweets, Braun said straight out why she got the account deleted:

There are two ways I can interpret this tweet: 1) the real reason is Braun’s kills Twitter account on a whim, or 2) this is just a bit of bravado that she dashed off without thinking about what an outrageous overreach it implied. Either way, next time you have trouble with your Twitter account, you’ll have to wonder whether you pissed off someone in Reds’ marketing. Apparently they have that kind of power.

#3 – @SeeHearTell never said he was a Reds’ or MLB employee
I couldn’t verify this for myself because the account had already been disabled, so I asked:

@lisabraun did he actually say he was an employee? Could have just been a hotel employee or someone else on the scene.

— rhm17 (@rhm17) December 13, 2013

The response I got was a question. Here’s a screengrab of it, since the original seems to have since been deleted:

That sounded to me like a 144-character way to say “only MLB employees are here; therefore, all you have to say is that you’re here and you’re impersonating an MLB employee.” So, I said:

@lisabraun ah, so no one in the whole building is employed by anyone other than mlb, then?

— rhm17 (@rhm17) December 13, 2013

Which I realize now sounds kind of sarcastic, but I didn’t mean it that way. I was intending to verify my understanding of what she’d said. I didn’t really get verification, though, just another question response, again no longer available on Twitter:

To sum up: no, @SeeHearTell never claimed to be a Reds employee. The best they can say is that it was implied. So even if you bought the idea that claiming to be a Reds’ employee on Twitter could somehow be a security threat, the fact that the claiming didn’t actually happen sort of undercuts that whole thing.

So…Why Do I Care?
Hey, remember when this was just a mildly entertaining “is it real?” discussion about a random Twitter account that was predicting trades? Suddenly it’s a story of intrigue, questions answered with questions, and evidence destroyed.

It’s apropos of nothing; the Reds overreacted ridiculously and then tried to pretend like they were being rational about it all along, like a high schooler who stumbled and then tried to strut it off like nothing happened.

But MLB and the Reds do too much strutting. It’s not OK to scream “security!” because you’re annoyed or because your brand is being played with. It’s an abuse of power, and it needs to be identified that way. I want them to be ashamed of themselves because they’ve been acting shamefully.

Of course, you can’t rule out the possibility that this has all just been a J.J. Abrams-esque scheme to keep us talking about the Reds even though they haven’t done jack at the winter meetings. In which case I will have played right into their devious plot!