Should NHL Players Control Who Sees Their Social Media Activity?
The debate about what's public and what shouldn't be...
A recent story involving Anaheim Ducks defenseman Olen Zellweger and a new social media account called NHL Follow Tracker has sparked an unexpected debate across the NHL: should players have more control over who sees their social media activity? More specifically, who players follow and unfollow?
Zellweger, who is Canadian, went viral after unfollowing several American stars—including Auston Matthews and Jack Hughes—following Team Canada’s Olympic loss. What he assumed was harmless “housekeeping” because he didn’t want to be reminded of the painful loss quickly became a viral talking point amongst his teammates and fans.
This was all thanks to an account that tracked NHL players’ Instagram activity in real time: the NHL Follow Tracker.
Public Platform or Personal Space?
Essentially, the creator of the account — Fuat Aras — put together a bot that tracks who NHL players follow and unfollow on Instagram, and then feeds that information into a program, which then feeds to an X (Twitter) feed. Each player or team that makes an addition or subtraction receives an X post, sometimes highlighting multiple follows and unfollows.
Sounds harmless enough.
That is, until you realize that the information tends to lead to conversations about whether players have beef, perhaps like someone in a romantic way, are going through some sort of relationship or professional spat — all relatively private things that some players might not want out there.
The topic of the debate is black and white, but the solution isn’t. The question that fans are debating is essentially, if an account is public, like most Instagram accounts, is everything fair game? Some fans argue yes, it’s all publicly accessible, so curating the information isn’t unethical. Others argue that just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should.
Even if these weren’t public figures or famous athletes, the issue is the same. The only difference is fan interest. As you can imagine, fans love to know if Auston Matthews is going to unfollow the Maple Leafs. What if he suddenly follows a new team? What does that mean about his future? Those kinds of things create headlines and high-traffic stories for publishers.
As one commenter noted, players using public profiles are essentially operating “business accounts” to build their personal brand. If players want the upside of the press and potential revenue that comes with it, they have to accept the downside.
