Look, I’m not comfortable defending him. He hasn’t been convicted of rape, so I don’t feel comfortable “punishing” someone for a crime he may have just made up for some sort of demented cred. God knows we can’t believe everything we read on these message boards
If he’d posted my upskirt on reddit, I’d be writing to the powers that be at reddit and asking them to take it down, not howling for his tarring and feathering.
Meanwhile, the same “If you don’t want your boss to read it, don’t write it” BS could be turned around into, “you know everyone has a camera phone these days. If you don’t want someone posting a picture of you wearing it, don’t wear it out in public”.
I think it’s pathetic that some people are “determined” to fuck someone up IRL because they wrote something offensive online. That, in my opinion, deserves more stigma than just being a jerk on a message board where the admins clearly stand behind you while you’re doing it.
If he felt it mete to make up creeper stories, then he really shouldn’t be surprised when they come back to bite him in the ass.
Except that, by reddit’s rules, he hasn’t done anything wrong, has he?
Besides, reddit doesn’t set the rules of life. It may be okay for him to post these things on reddit, but if another site goes “Hey, look at what this asshole’s posting on reddit,” he’s not immune from the fallout. Even if what he’s doing is technically legal, all that protects him from is being arrested. So long as individuals’ responses to him are also legal, there’s not a damn thing he can do about them.
I dunno, I’d say that’s probably not bad advice. If you’d be upset that someone could see you in certain clothing from several feet away, maybe you shouldn’t be wearing the clothing.
Of course, upskirt photos obtained via tricks like sticking a phone between a girl’s legs approach the invasion of privacy line if not cross it. That’s closer to touching than looking.
If you are writing or doing things that are so offensive online that they have the potential to fuck your life up “IRL” then I have to break it to you: Internet Activities ARE PART of IRL. The tubes aren’t some magical fantasyland of no consequences and no hurt. Now, if a fellow redditor had outed him, then I can see some outrage. But getting butthurt because someone had the skills to out him and then doing it? He can deal with it in exactly the same way he suggested to everyone who’s pictures or reputations he gleefully exploited before. Burns a little when it’s applied to you, doesn’t it?
Now, for what it’s worth, I do agree with you: I too have very little patience for grown people wearing unfortunate skankwear in public and then bitching about it when it gets the reaction they should have known it would get.
That said, 15-16 year old girls don’t have mature brains yet, and should be protected (or prevented) from possible nasty reactions until they are mature, not allowed (or for God’s sake ENCOURAGED) to be exploited and turned into creeper-bait.
Shouldn’t you be mad at the guy’s boss for firing him? The writer only published a not-well-kept “secret” of his RL identity. Information wants to be free and all that. Dude practically made a career of posting offensive-as-shit troll bait and then leaping down people’s throats with LOLz about how they were being Evil Censors.
Actually, considering how crazy-active he was, I suspect his boss would want him fired for misusing company computers.
Replace with “outing” and you’ll get the emotional gist. I believe it comes from “full documentation” (documents=dox) regarding people basically stalking or investigating someone online and then posting all of their personal information somewhere public, or giving it to the police.
For example, just today, Anonymous (the hacker group) claims to have “doxed” the asshole who bullied Amanda what’shername into suicide. They turned the info over to the cops instead of making it public tho.
My problem with all this is the hypocrisy of Gawker, who have apparently appointed themselves the scolding mothers of the internet. In the past, they’ve started little internet wars with the bullies of 4chan, because they were taking internet fights into the real world and flinging around the real names of people they didn’t like. I fail to see how what Gawker did here is any different. They didn’t like the behavior of this guy, so they exposed his real life information specifically to mess up his life. I’m not at all a fan of what this guy did, but like it or not, as far as I’ve heard, everything he did was legal, and there are tons of people doing it. I just think it’s troubling that this kind of vigilantism seems to be accepted.
That last bit it is precisely the justification Brutsch and others who like photos of underage girls used themselves - which is why I can’t possibly care that Brutsch is now the victim of his own type of logic. Brutsch was all about violating other peoples’ privacy until suddenly it was his own privacy that was on the line.
That said - it is the flat out truth that no one is anonymous on the internet, therefore we should all be careful about what we post on the internet. Brutsch should have known this. He was a grown up, not say, a twelve year old in her first bikini.
Finally, if an upskirt photo of you were posted at Reddit, “the powers that be” there would have laughed in your face if you asked them to remove it - because the “the powers that be” was Brutsch himself and posting shit to upset people was his main form of entertainment. Instead, he would have posted your pleading letters in his Reddit threads and encouraged his fans to revile you for it.
Really - you should go and read those articles linked in the OP. Brutsch was not a free speech warrior.
That’s how I feel about it, without getting into all the “did the guy deserve it for being a jerk” stuff. Maybe the guy was a jerk, but I don’t like that Gawker took it upon themselves to rain down some fire. Two wrongs not making a right and all that.
I’m stunned that anybody would even bother to argue against.
There’s absolutely no argument you can make against doxing him that doesn’t cut deeper against any attempt to justify his behavior.
You can’t say, “no restrictions on free speech” and then ask for a restriction on free speech.
The closest is, possibly, arguing that doxing a Reddit mod is “below” the dignity of a reputable journalist. A, it’s Gizmodo…so. B, his “success” on Reddit actually elevated him to the point where his identity is legitimately news.
He stopped being an anonymous Internet troll when I became aware of him despite never going on reddit.
Reddit’s anonymity rules protect him from Reddit backfire and Reddit penalties. It looks like they’ve done that successfully, and that’s great. But they don’t protect him from non-Reddit penalties, and that’s what he’s run into. I have to say, I really don’t have sympathy for the guy. Free speech cuts both ways.
