kohlrak: Then it makes more sense to argue from this standpoint. If a person does horrible things, they likely don't need doxxing for horrible to be done in return. We don't consider releasing information to police agencies, and police agencies exclusively, doxxing. If the law disagrees with what you find horrible, is it not wiser to focus on changing the law, or is it appropriate to take the law into your own hands?
GreasyDogMeat: I am arguing from that stance.
kohlrak: Don't get me wrong, i have my own answers to these questions, but I ask them to not bother with potentially pointless justifications. There's no point to even frame discussion on doxing as appropriate or not in the context of what's acceptable justification or not if what is reasonably appropriate is already available. If that makes sense.
GreasyDogMeat: I'm not giving any justifications for doxxing.
kohlrak: EDIT: To clarify, the conversation is basically about whether or not doxxing is an appropriate response to a person's opinions, when doxxing inherently comes with the necessary risk of escalation beyond words, where as opinions don't.
GreasyDogMeat: Also to clarify, in the example I gave the pedophile (the real one that was the original intended target) was an actual one that had... 'solidified'... the title if you get my meaning and not someone with a disgusting opinion.
The point being, even when the target is 'justified' the doxxing is a form of vigilantism that can backfire... and it did... horribly. An innocent person was horribly scarred over doxxing and the harassment that followed.
I AGREE WITH YOU ON EVERYTHING YOU'VE SAID. You seem to think that I'm suggesting doxxing is sometimes a good thing... I'm not saying that.
Projection (i'm not suggesting anything). I know what you're suggesting. I'm just letting you know you're setting yourself up for failure when you don't take crystal clear stance on what would have been more appropriate ("the information should've went to the police"). You end up allowing people frame your own arguments and yourself, and that's precisely what happened when i went to sleep. You allowed someone to create a frame where doxxing was appropriate in the absence of anything else, 'cause nothing else was one the table. You were called a free speech hypocrite, since you didn't have a solid stance. The stance you should've taken was then taken by the person framing you, making you look unreasonable.
GreasyDogMeat: You're either alright with doxxing in certain instances... or you aren't.
Telika: Ah, ok. I had missed this specific question.
Yeah, indeed, I'm not very clear on the answer about this. I would say, spontaneously, that I could imagine situations where doxxing is legitimate. In the case, for instance, of some very prominent neonazi propagandist, or some very prominent disinformer, operating under the shield of anonymity. Outing their genuine identity could be legitimate. But would it necessarily be "doxxing" (if doxxing implies pointless details such as address, contacts, etc) ? What I may have in mind could be just legal investigation, and reintegration within the world of accountability.
Generally speaking, I'm, on the opposite, more favorable to culprit anonymity in journalistic articles, to ensure potential reintegration in society (if a person "changes", a second chance is only possible if the stigma of the transgression is lifted). The logic of public doxxing goes against that.
But is the anonymity of some (imaginary) mass propagandist as valid as the anonymity of a Bansky ?
Also, my gut reflex (the basic eye-for-eye thing above which civilization tries to lift us) could lead me to doxx doxxers. No, you are right. I don't really have a definite clear answer on this.
(Edit: I'd also say that, underlying this, I have very ambivalent, "unresolved", views on anonymity.)
If you can't even make it illegal, you are indeed engaging in vigilantism. If you have information where a law has been broken, you either give this information to the police (in criminal cases) or a lawyer (in civil cases). If it's not even illegal, you're attacking the problem from the wrong angle. Doxxing, the way it's performed, actually is illegal (incitment of violence [usually], libel [if you get it wrong], and probably a few more). If you have information on a doxxer, report it to a department that is handling the case of someone who got doxxed.
RWarehall: The only thing you have done wrong is back down. Your chief competitor Valve knows when to fight back, but you don't. When some of these same activists exploited their reporting system to force games like HuniePop and many visual novels off their service, Valve responded strongly, saying that they aren't in the business of deciding taste. If you don't like it, you don't have to buy it and that they will only remove content that is illegal from that point on.
I think Linko is the best community manager you ever had. He looked at what was causing problems on the forums and fixed them. Political discussions never were actual discussions at all, so he banned them and enforced it.
Spectre: That was a good post but I disagree on these points. We did have those discussions until there were deliberate attempts to derail threads which could have been dealt with by a mod instead of locking them.
Valves actions are in line with pumping out trash while having it look like they've taken a moral standpoint.
To be fair, this problem wasn't limited to Linko, as the recent thread lockings point out. And if the mods can't enforce rules when people are derailing for the purpose of creating outrage, then you have to play the game of defending your views off the rails, 'cause you can't rely on the moderation to target that. By taking this stance of locking threads, anyone who doesn't like certain political discussion can use that to ultimately trigger the gog mods to lock the threads, silencing the "hate speech" that is actual discussion. It's really well played, and sad that it actually works. Effectively, GOG is therefore encouraging the discussions going to hell, even if that's not their intention.
