Legal and Ethical Challenges in Social Media: A Case Study on Invasion of Privacy

This article discusses the legal and ethical challenges in social media, focusing on invasion of privacy. It presents a case study of a Minnesota court decision in 2009, where a clinic worker disclosed medical information of a patient on MySpace without consent. The article also explores the tort of the act on invasion of privacy and the struggle to balance privacy and freedom of expression.

Social media is being widely used by the people from all over the world not only for
entertainment, but also to share a large amount of important information and to express
different views. However, with the widened use of this platform, some of the activities over
social media are creating several ethical as well as legal issues (Obar & Wildman, 2015).
Various laws and regulations are also there in order to mitigate all kinds of legal and ethical
challenges in social media but still, there are some cases that depict how the use of social
media is creating issues with invasion of privacy as well as other bases of civil liability in
spite of the laws (Spiekermann, Acquisti, Böhme & Hui, 2015).
Defamation appears to be one of the common civil claims that are brought against the
users of social media but it is worth noted that many lawsuits also involve additional theories
of liability. Some cases not only involve defamation but also claim infliction of emotional
distress, intentional but unwanted interference, invasion of privacy, breach of contract and
many others (Mulligan, Koopman & Doty, 2016). A theory of liabilities that can be used
against the social media abusers who disobeys the social rules and emotionally injures others
is the tort of the act on invasion of privacy. The tort law of America has been struggling to
define the amount of private information anyone can exploit for entertainment and profit
(Warren & Brandeis, 2019). However, balancing the individuals’ right to privacy and the
speakers’ right to the freedom of expression has always been a challenging task and the
emergence of social media has made it more difficult (Stewart, 2017).
In this regard, a recent case that illustrates legal challenge in social media can be
discussed. In the year 2009, a Minnesota court decided a case that depicts one of the civil
lawsuits that alleges invasion of privacy that occurred via publication of private information
on a social media platform. In the case, a clinic worker disclosed some medical information
of a person in the social media that are humiliating and it was done without obtaining any
consent. The information was unlawfully gleaned from the medical file to the patient’s sister-

in-law. The medical information included the fact that the patient had cheated on her husband
and had a disease which is transmitted through sexual intercourse. Referring the patient as
“Rotten Candy”, this information was published in the “MySpace” page (Court Listener,
n.d.). However, the page of MySpace was taken down within a day and the patient could only
verify that six people had accessed the information. The patient then brought suit against her
former sister-in-law and the clinic worker for invading her privacy. Minnesota law always
makes a defendant for the people who disclose the private information and MySpace page
may have been seen by a few users but, the court claimed that liability is always triggered
when the discloser makes the particular information publicly available. Thus, according to the
court, the invasion of privacy claim is relevant only if it is posted to a publicly accessible
website. Even so, the court of Minnesota dismissed the claim of plaintiff regarding the
invasion of privacy due to some strategic error. Due to lack of evidence the plaintiff’s claim
regarding invasion of privacy was failed. However, the court announced that the claims will
be valid if they are revived with evidence (Court Listener, n.d.).
I also concur in the opinion of the court that without having proper evidence the claim
of invasion of privacy cannot be justified. The plaintiff should always prove that the
defendant gave publicity to a private matter. However, it is quite unnecessary to create such
road rule because there should be some evidence in the previous record that MySpace page
directly sent the information to a large number of audiences which were sufficient to be used
as evidence. Also, it is unnecessary to give any kind of consideration to the issue regarding
publicity in behind the statement “lack of evidence”. Still, the court’s opinion to revive the
case with evidence is appreciable.

References
Court Listener. (n.d.) Yath v. Fairview Clinics, NP, 767 N.W.2d 34 (Minn. Ct. App. 2009).
Retrieved from https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1835556/yath-v-fairview-
clinics-np/
Mulligan, D. K., Koopman, C., & Doty, N. (2016). Privacy is an essentially contested
concept: a multi-dimensional analytic for mapping privacy. Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering
Sciences, 374(2083), 20160118.
Obar, J. A., & Wildman, S. S. (2015). Social media definition and the governance challenge-
an introduction to the special issue. Obar, JA and Wildman, S.(2015). Social media
definition and the governance challenge: An introduction to the special issue.
Telecommunications policy, 39(9), 745-750.
Spiekermann, S., Acquisti, A., Böhme, R., & Hui, K. L. (2015). The challenges of personal
data markets and privacy. Electronic Markets, 25(2), 161-167.
Stewart, D. W. (2017). A comment on privacy. Journal of the academy of marketing
science, 45(2), 156-159.
Warren, S., & Brandeis, L. (2019). The right to privacy. Litres.