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Doxing in the loose sense could be harassment in certain circumstances, such as if you broadcast a person's home address to an audience with the intent to cause
by fluoridation 8mo ago
Doxing in the loose sense could be harassment in certain circumstances, such as if you broadcast a person's home address to an audience with the intent to cause that audience to use that address, even if the address was already out there. In that case, the problem is not the release of information, but the intent you're communicating with the release. It would be the same if you told that audience "you know guys? It's not very difficult to find jdoe's home address if you google his name. I'm not saying anything, I'm just saying." Merely de-pseudonymizing a screen name may or may not be harassment. Divulging that jdoe's real name is John Doe would not have the same implications as if his name was, say, Keanu Reeves.
Because the two are distinct, one can't simply replace "doxing" with "harassment".
- JoshTriplett 8mo agoGenerally speaking, every case I've seen of people using the term "doxing" tends to be for the case that specifically is harassment; it has the connotation of using the information, precisely because if you aren't intending to use it there's no good reason for you to have it.
- fluoridation 8mo agoThat's just another way the term is used incorrectly.
- JoshTriplett 8mo agoLanguage evolves. Connotation tends to become definition. Not always the only definition, but connotation becomes the "especially" or the "definition 2", and can become the primary definition over time.
- fluoridation 8mo agoThat's not what I mean. If we agree that harassment is wrong and that doxing is not harassment (because not all doxing is harassment), then it's incorrect to say that doxing is wrong. For example, the article from the blog, even if we agree that it is doxing, isn't harassment. The person being discussed is presented in a positive light: >I for one will be buying Denis/Masha/whoever a well deserved cup of coffee. Using one term when what is meant is actually the other serves nothing but to sow confusion.
- grimgrin 8mo agoupdate the etymology then on wikipedia with your reference that current etymology is what we’re all talking about obv
- bawolff 8mo agoYou can harass someone while discussing them in a positive light. And i don't just mean under colloquial definition, i mean under the legal definition of harrasment. In fact its fairly common for unwanted "positive" attention to be harrasment - e.g. unwanted sexual advances mostly fit that description.
- fluoridation 8mo agoYou are generalizing an irrelevant point. What I was getting at is that unlike the usual usage of doxing, it was not a call to go bother that person. I didn't think I needed to make that point this explicitly within the context of this subthread.
- bawolff 8mo agoWhich is irrelavent as that is not a requirement for it to be harrasment. I get that a call to action is a common feature of doxing and it wasn't present here, but its not a particularly common feature of harrasment outside of the context of doxing and nothing in the definition of harrasment requires it.
- allarm 8mo ago> Language evolves That's just another way of saying "words don't have meanings". Yes, it evolves, but to preserve the original meanings, that evolution should be slowed down as much as possible to avoid “black is white” effects.