An “Ask Me Anything” thread on online forum Reddit went awry Wednesday for Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California.
Issa had taken to the social community website under the IAMA tag - The Internet American Moratorium Act - to drive discussion on his legislation aimed at Internet privacy. However, by the time he had logged in to answer questions, the forum had been bombarded by less-than cordial debate over the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, a highly controversial measure approved by the House.
Users waylaid Issa with questions aimed mostly at his waffling stance on Internet privacy laws.
The top comment was posted by a user called The Milkman, “Hey Darrell, why did you vote for CISPA?”
“He's a wolf in sheep's clothing. He doesn't support SOPA, but was a co-sponsor of CISPA because it wasn't as widely publicized.” wrote another Reddit commenter, Teraken. “He's been constantly lying to everybody regarding his stance on net neutrality for the past two years,”
Unless vetoed by President Barack Obama, CISPA expands the ability of the government to access private data. Most Reddit users obviously take issue with it.
Despite the hostile tone of the conversation, Issa did his best to answer a litany of queries. Still, his answers didn’t top the post in popularity.
Despite the fact that Issa’s new IAMA bill proposes to "create a two-year moratorium on any new laws, rules or regulations governing the Internet," he did, in fact, vote in favor of CISPA.
Obama took to Reddit earlier this year for his own “Ask Me Anything” thread. That discussion was so popular it crashed the site.
Like Obama, Issa posted a photo of himself answering the questions in real time.