Doxxing a Blogger

[Phoebe]

Is it ever wrong to dox somebody who writes a public blog? Or should I say, is it ever right?

My intuitions on this conflict a great deal. I very much miss the internet of the 20th century, which was very different in so many ways. Some of the spontaneous forms of communication and creativity were carried forward, and some evolved in even better ways. On the other hand, so many were destroyed.

I don't think we understand very well how to manage the twin phenomena of being able to encounter so many other people for intellectual or creative (or plain lousy) discussion and interaction, and being able to document and trace everything someone says, in every context, for all of the foreseeable future. Lines we may try to draw arbitrarily between private communications and public facing communications are easily trampled. The consequence is that you can't take advantage of all the delightful ability to have private intellectual conversations that the internet could afford, because there is no real privacy there. Worse yet, you barely have an expectation of privacy face to face with people who mostly all come equipped with an excellent recording device.

Part of having conversations that allow you to learn is being able to say stupid stuff and learn from it. But now people are pinned down by all the things they've said, and dealt with quite harshly in some cases. Just this week we've had stories about stray tweets that weren't even remotely offensive causing people to lose their jobs or not be hired for projects. This has been going on for a long time now - just the latest big examples. Now it extends to layers of association with people who are themselves guilty of wrongthink. You see right-wing complaints about this cancel culture stuff all the time, but to be honest most of the serious cases I know of people losing livelihood and having serious problems resulted from right-wing objections to wrongthink.

The examples prompting me to discuss this are on the one hand a journalist who was fired for objecting to the amount of military aid we give to Israel even as we are giving, in his opinion, too little in COVID relief. Imagine a supposedly left-leaning outlet firing a journalist for this anodyne observation!

The other case is Scott Siskind, a leader among the community of self-described "rationalist" bloggers and thinkers. I put it in quotes because they don't define it in any normal way I'm familiar with, and because they're not particular rational in any sense. However, I have followed his saga as a blogger over a period of several years now, and he and his supporters are very upset that he was supposedly doxxed by the New York Times despite writing under a pseudonym. Well, that's utter nonsense because he has published the same material under his own name, and minimal effort was required to find out who he is, long before all this. So I'm not sympathetic to his claims about being doxxed, but I do think he should be able to have discussions in a community he created, and get s*** wrong and try to do better, and debate things with a whole range of people, without being punished for it in a way that doesn't fit the offense. He's very offensive, mind you, in my personal opinion, but it bothers me that he's being treated as a reactionary pariah now to whom we can do anything - like he deserves any bad s*** that comes his way because of his dabbling and investigations with reactionary ideas. To the extent that he buys any of those ideas or respects them, I think he's totally wrong. But he also seems like the kind of guy who is open to being proven wrong, though the door maybe is only open a sliver (see above: the label "rationalist" is ironic here). It's still open a sliver. And the things he's being condemned for were things he wrote in a private email supposedly. If he can't try out his lousy ideas in a private email, then he might as well be publishing every bad thought he ever has. How are we supposed to fix things that are wrong with people's ideas if they're saddled with their worst takes forever? I'm not saying he shouldn't be judged for his bad views - but he should be judged for having bad views, and not for everything else. If he hadn't doxxed himself already, he shouldn't be doxxed. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong about this.

[Kyle]

I personally believe posting under a pseudonym, for me, is dumb. I post under my name with the understanding that I’ll be accountable for what I post. If it’s something I don’t want people knowing I post, then I won’t post it.

That said, I recognize that I have the privilege of posting under my name because I’m a white dude that lives in the US. IF you live in a totalitarian regime, then you may be persecuted for your beliefs. If you’re a woman, you could be stalked and subject to harassment for your beliefs. If your a minority, you could be targeted for violence because of your beliefs.

So when is it appropriate to dox someone? I don’t know. It’s case by case. Scumbags posting racist shit on Reddit should be doxxed- even if it means they lose their job.