But that information is in both the story I originally linked to as well as other news stories. Fennville, MI? It’s in this story! Rochester Hills, MI? It’s in this story! How in the heck is that doxxing?
I was absolutely not edging in that direction. Why did I use locations? Why do reporters use locations? To better identify the people in question. To connect a specific person with a specific action that is being reported in the news. These fucks said some reprehensible shit that was being reported on. Since being published on multiple sites, that information is neither hidden nor private, nor should it be. The stuff Miller deleted is not secret or hard to find or only available by searching Facebook profiles. Better to identify a shitbag as Joe Blow from Walla Walla, Washington, than to have someone read it and think his neighbor Joe Blow from Puyallup, Washington, is the shitbag in the story. Again, this ain’t doxxing. It ain’t even almost doxxing, and I sure as shit wasn’t doing a call to action.
Happy Lendervedder, IMO you should let this go. I bet I could pretty easily find a phone number or street address for some of those people through public media. I could probably find the names of some of their kids. But I hope you agree that info would be wildly inappropriate to post here, even if I just used public information found with Google and Facebook.
Their hometowns isn’t as bad as a street address, but it still provided no additional value to your post. Instead of trying to parse exactly where something becomes inappropriate doxxing, “don’t include personal info if it doesn’t provide value” seems like an easy guide.
There wasn’t only one article that a mod could quickly check to confirm everything was in the media. You had to do some research yourself to find it, first on Facebook and then to find other articles that included a hometown. It’s not fair to expect the mods to follow multiple links to make sure everything you included was published somewhere.
Ok, then, all due respect, I need to further clarify something with the mods; would I have gotten edited/called out for doxxing if I had posted this (or will I now?):
Doxxing is providing information that will allow someone to identify an otherwise anoymou writer or poster. if the poster was not anonymous, you cannot dox them.
Maybe you can debate whether someone posted something anonymously in some cases–does it count if they revealed their real life info a long time ago when everyone forgot? But when their name is on the post that they made, they were clearly not anonymous. Hence you cannot dox a Facebook poster (unless they use a fake name).
I also note you both are saying a poster ALMOST did something. I find that a weird thing to moderate, and particularly odd in the Pit by Miller due to his very hands off style of moderation, adhering most of the time to just the letter of the rules. Dealing with “almost breaking the rules” is more a GD thing, not how the Pit usually moderated.
The only proactive moderation I’ve ever seen from him is to warn people that they are close to violating the rules. But here he seems to have acted on it, doing the one thing that every mod is supposed to be very hesitant to do without direct permission: modifying a poster’s post. It’s treated as importantly as modifying a quote box.
As such, I can see no justification for this moderation. If this is (close to) doxxing, then so would be revealing a whistleblower’s name after it’s been stated in papers. Yet that was allowed in a more highly moderated forum.
The difference is that the reporter is not pseudonymous to the publisher. The author has to abide by the ethics of journalism and is subject to have his livelihood affected. That gives the person motivation not to reveal things that would get them in trouble. The publisher also has a responsibility to report accurately and ethically. On the other hand, posters on a message board writing through pseudonymous accounts don’t have this same obligation. That’s one of the differences between doxxing and reporting, which is why the same activity is looked upon differently.
Let me also point out that names are common and there has been more than one situation where someone was “identified” through Facebook accounts or other social media and then targeteted through that identification … but it turned out that was someone else not related to the original discussion/kerfuffle/news story, just some random stranger with a similar or identical name.
We’re generally going to err on the side of caution here.
And always, attempts to publicly shame, calls to action, and other social justice warrior antics are not appreciated on this site.
WTH is a “social justice warrior antic” and what does it have to do with this specific discussion?
Good lord, the locations of the people who threatened to lynch or murder or assassinate the governor of Michigan are publicly reported in news sites. What I did is not doxxing. I posted information that is publicly available from news sources on the Internet, and was publicly available at the time Miller edited my posts.
Only on those two statements (and initially, you only linked the one from Metro Times). The location information on the rest relied on Facebook research.
I did a little of that myself. And when I did, I came upon a couple of FB posts listing the people that you posted quotes from, along with a rubric implying that the FB community ought to band together and shame (or worse) the named culprits.* Even when I’m in agreement with the notions that such people are scum, and that it’s regrettable that scum should be able to hide behind even the flimsiest of privacy protections, I find it a little disquieting to observe. And I definitely feel that it doesn’t really belong on the Dope.
Generally, speaking, if I’m doing a C&P from an article, I put the text that I’m C&Ping into a quote box. If I wish to add a single pixel of data that was not in my initial C&P, it goes outside the quote box. I do this to keep myself out of trouble.
*Granted your post didn’t include such a rubric. But just because there’s a fallacy called “Slippery Slope,” it doesn’t mean that slippery slopes don’t exist.
The purpose of this seems to be to insult the moderation staff instead of contributing anything useful to the discussion. While I am generally fairly forgiving in ATMB with respect to warnings, that doesn’t give you free rein to attack the staff. Don’t do this again.
I’m with the mods on this one: providing additional info that potentially makes it easier to locate and communicate with people who may be in the news temporarily, but aren’t public figures on a continuing basis, is a bad idea whether or not it qualifies as doxxing.