Doxxing, or who deserves anonymity

I'm somewhat fascinated by this topic.

As we've seen here, many folks on the internet prefer anonymity in order to speak freely, and not face repercussions in the work place for expressing their opinion on political or social topics.

But, others use it to spread hate, attack others, or make things up.

We recently saw the Huffington Post expose the alt-right twitter account of "Amy Mek" which resulted in her WWE executive husband losing his job.

Trump's Loudest Anti-Muslim Twitter Troll Is A Shady Vegan Married To An (Ousted) WWE Exec | HuffPost

The Huffington Post reporter was briefly suspended from twitter as a result of the article, but was quickly reinstated.

Then just yesterday, I saw two more interesting cases.

The Daily Caller exposed the guy behind the group, Sleeping Giants, which has organized advertiser boycotts against Breitbart and FOX News.

They've also done things, which while aren't the same as doxxing, are viewed as intrusive, like publishing the public phone number and email address of a Hulu exec, so that people could lobby (harass) her.




And, lastly, a #resistance figure, who claimed to be a decorated military veteran, and had written about being sexually abused while in the military was exposed as someone who had never served, and who had previously been arrested for making false rape claims.



The account of the person who doxxed her has been suspended by twitter.

So, where's the line?

I think it's pretty clear that if you show up in Charlottesville, carrying a tiki torch, you probably shouldn't expect people to respect your privacy.

Does advocacy, like in the Sleeping Giants case, change the equation, as opposed to simply sharing an opinion?

If you're "just sharing your opinions" but those opinions are deemed to be hateful, as in the Amy Mek case, is it ok to expose the person? But, then who decides what's hateful.

And, in a case where someone is making things up, and stealing valor, it would seem like the only way to prove the falsehoods is to expose the person, but in this case, twitter suspended the "doxxer".

 

Anyone who assumes that what they write on the Internet, while using a pseudonym, is anonymous is a fool.

A culture norm against doxxing has developed, except when its OK - the terms of which are vague and unclear - but it's only a norm and those shift. People should behave in a way that recognizes they're not really anonymous (even when using Tor and a VPN).

 

I don’t know how you deal with the unwieldiness of the Internet in general, and this is no exception.

 

Well, this is the thing, right?

Doxxing is always bad, except when it isn't.

 

Anonymity on the net does not exist, not if someone who knows what they're doing wants to find you. I have witnessed someone who pissed off a gamer's net bulletin board being exposed in about a day and a half - name, home address and phone, place of employment, wife's place of employment, pictures of them and their house, and more. How frightening would that be, to read a fifteen page thread on a board like this which included verbal abuse, threats, and all that information?

Most often it's saber rattling and rude phone calls - but that depends entirely on the composition of the group doing the doxxing. Swatting has gotten people killed. People have had their families torn abort, lost their jobs, had crazy people show up at their homes.

When it's really bad, when the flying monkeys of 4chan go after some poor bastard in full cry, they can come close to destroying someone's life... and even after it settles, the person they went after lives in fear from then on, never quite being certain that it's really over.

It's one thing to expose a fraud and make them uncomfortable, to call them out, but doxxing can get out of hand and avalanche overnight.

 

Come to think of it, it could be an interesting novel or movie in which someone who has their life ruined for an internet post gets revenge against the online people who expose and shame them.

 

It's sort of interesting too.

There are some "prominent on twitter" accounts that re respected, and with which big names reporters will interact, like southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) | Twitter.

I'm not sure that anyone has made a big effort to doxx him.

And then there's neontaster (@neontaster) | Twitter, who is a right winger, who interacts with a lot of conservative commentators, and people are determined to doxx him,

He was recently "exposed" as Ben Shapiro's father, though that looks not be true, and the poster who "doxxed" him wasn't suspended from twitter.



And, it's been six years since twitter.com/ComfortablySmug, the right wing troll, who lives to "own the libs" was exposed:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jackstuef/the-man-behind-comfortablysmug-hurricane-sandys

 

Baron, you missed the cinematic bleh that was Unfriended?

 

Yeah, two points here...

The person I mentioned in the original post, who was accused of stealing valor, was exposed by posing a picture, taken from their home in Utah, with some mountains visible in the background.

Based on that alone, using google earth, and then property records, someone was able to find out everything about this person. It's quite incredible, and a little scary.

And, what makes it scary is the mob.

Do some people deserve to get exposed? Yes, I think they probably do. But, once you expose someone, you can't control the mob, and do you need to take this into account before you do expose someone?

 

Or even Catfish.

If you lie to someone, about who you are, is it legitimate for that person to expose who you really are?

 

Our own, long gone poster @Boom_70 was famously anonymous, and I don't think a lot of people here believed his back story of Hummer driving, Jets season ticket owning, Connecticut dwelling, boyfriend of @21.

And, I know a lot of people here were determined to find out who he was.

But, damn if he didn't give his opinion on all kinds of things, and make specific references to places, without giving away one fact of who he was.

Speculation turned up on threads like these two:

Todd Marinovich, the Happy Ending
Your favorite unsolved mystery

But, would someone learning who he was, and that it didn't match his self defined persona be enough to expose him? Certainly not, according to the rules here. right?

 

This is the crux of it. You can expose someone, but once the ball starts rolling you can't control it and have no idea what it might crash into.

Recently we've seen the exposure and public shaming of people, usually on FB, who said or did racist things - the attorney in New York who made an ass of himself yelling at wait staff to "Speak English!", or the woman who called the cops on a little girl selling bottled water. Those overall worked well, and the rally with a mariachi band outside the lawyer's apartment was hilarious. OTOH, he also was evicted from his work space. The guy seemed to be a real dick, but was that justified?

Lying is something people do. Often it's done to inflate themselves - claiming to be an ex-SEAL or something. I have no problem with outing that, assuming that it is confined to exposing and shaming them. If it's done to perpetrate a fraud, say claiming to have a kid with cancer and starting a GoFundMe page - then drop the hammer, but really that one should simply be reported to the police.

With all of it, the danger is that once you do expose it you have zero control. I don't think anyone really understand why some stories go viral, but if one does, what happens to your subject then is completely out of your control. If something bad happens, you didn't do it... but you might very well feel, and perhaps ultimately be, responsible for it.