TW: racism. On my flight today, the person in the row ahead of me was having an incredibly racist text exchange (iMessage, presumably he purchased WiFi) with what appeared to be a close friend or family member. The entirety of the exchange was racist memes, making fun of African Americans on the airplane, etc.

At least every other message contained a “Hard R” somewhere in it (whether typed or within a meme). This dude was complaining about the “N***s” 2 rows ahead of him. Comparing them to monkeys, talking about slavery, lynching, torturing, and sending them back to “ugga bugga land.” He then proceeded to talk about the #1 flight attendant, who was also African-American, was “moving at ape speed” and said something about her smoke detector (which I Googled once on the ground and, as I expected, not changing the battery in one’s smoke alarm is a racist trope).

I may or may not be sitting on a few videos shot over his shoulder of his phone screen. I also snuck pictures of his face during de-boarding. Without doxxing myself, I am nearly certain he is local to my area. I was considering uploading these videos to a local Facebook group and asking if anyone knows this man.

So here’s my ethical dilemma. This was a 1:1 conversation between plane dude and someone I suspect was not on the plane. Someone who seemed to be close to him. Did he have any expectation of privacy as to other people recording/actively watching his screen? Or is the fact that he was having this text conversation in a public place (in this case an airplane cabin) make it fair game for anyone to actively stare/secretly record?

As someone who generally advocates for digital privacy, that part of me is saying to permanently delete the videos and never speak of this again. But as someone who also advocates for civil rights for ALL individuals regardless of race, religion, gender, etc, I have a hard time letting this living waste of oxygen just simply get away with this. I felt so icky even being not even a full row away from this slimebag.

What say the brain trust? Does he have an expectation of privacy in his private text messages? Or fair game to out him since he was doing this in public?