The latest Portnoy-vs-Albany skirmish has a very specific target now. Portnoy isn't mad at the governor herself, or even at the existence of a state-run social account. He's mad that a New York taxpayer-funded account is being used to dunk like a burner, and he wants to know who is actually behind the keyboard. The name attached to the operation, per Portnoy: Ben Freedman.
Portnoy's opening shot questions why state tax dollars are bankrolling a meme account in the first place.
I don’t get why New York tax dollars go to paying an employee to run a meme account for @NYGovPress But it’s only fair Ben Freedman shows himself so I can see who I’m tweeting with. I couldn’t find the guy. He’s a ghost online
The complaint underneath the bit is pretty straightforward. If a government press account is going to mix it up online, the person typing should be willing to put their own face on the tweets instead of hiding under an official seal. Portnoy says he tried to find Freedman and came up empty — "a ghost online," in his words — which only made him push harder.
A few hours later he tagged in a different staffer to ask, plainly, for Ben's handle.
Hey @jengoodman75 can you give me Ben’s at. I feel like we should be able to tweet at each other than hiding behind the Kathy Hochul account. Thanks
From there it stopped being a one-off and turned into a full-on bounty. Portnoy went back to the timeline a minute later and made the ask even more direct, this time with a photo attached. Whatever subtlety was in the first round was gone.
The doubled-down version: a photo and a flat demand for the handle.
This is classic Portnoy internet beef pacing — start with a principle (don't hide behind a government logo), escalate to a name, then refuse to let it go until the other side either tweets back or gets dragged out into the open by their own followers. The Hochul press shop now has a choice: keep posting from behind the seal and let Portnoy keep yelling into the void, or let Ben tweet for himself. Either way, the standoff isn't ending quietly.