Once upon a time I didn't care much what I posted on the internet. I would pretty freely talk with other strangers about nearly anything and not struggle to come up with things to post. This was always in smaller forums or IRC channels.
Then I started using reddit and learned the danger that is one part karma addiction and two parts doxxing. The former made me reevaluate why I was posting so much. On small forums you have a tighter group of friends with a stronger connection. On reddit it's all about impressing the stranger.
Doxxing was something pretty foreign to me though. Reddit has it up there with being the worst thing that can happen to you, and has this idea of being constantly vigilent against the threat of having your personal information found out. Finding out who you are.
So I largely stopped posting.
But now I think I've forgotten how to effectively communicate with people on internet forums. I have the mentality that it's better to lurk for fear of what could happen. And I'm curious how common that fear is. So, hubski, are you scared to post?
Spoken like someone who knows nothing about doxxing. The first half of the violentacrez/Michael Brutsch saga was a bunch of trolls thinking it'd be hilarious to spread the notion that Dante was in jail for molesting his son... for the lulz. Since Reddit refused to do anything about it, but told me if I could catch them doing other things worthy of getting shadowbanned (important shit, like "altering their CSS") they'd hop right on it, so I spent a year drawing their fire to give them something to do other than destroy the chances of a loving father ever hanging out with his son. Violentacrez thought this was hilarious because he thought I was way too uptight, so he modded all of those trolls in /r/jailbait, which got it banned for the first time (because reddit is nothing if not inconsistent). That wasn't quite lulzy enough, though so one of them - whom he had become Facebook friends with - sold him out to Adrien Chen. There was no part of it that was about "consequences." It was always about "I have no power but look, yes I do." Nobody is ever doxed because they deserve it - that's always a retconned backstop so that people like you can think there's some logic to it. And four years later, the Great Reddit Hate Machine starts saying "oh yeah maybe we ought not to encourage bored Russian teenagers to googlebomb the notion that one of our future employees is a child molester" but literally - Reddit still hasn't said shit about my fun'n'games with the circlejerkers, Dante and violentacrez. Alexis apologized to me privately but only to get me to shut up. My wife? My wife got doxed because I mentioned in /r/skeptic that she delivered babies outside of a hospital. It was the comment after "someone should put your whore wife out of her misery." Did I seriously expect anything to happen from it? No. But there's always that niggling doubt. That's how shabnameh has always worked. Is the Taliban really going to kill your daughter for going to school once the US leaves? Mmmmmmaybe not. But better to be safe than sorry, right? It's simpler than that, really: if you piss off someone with more time and less morality than yourself, shit can go sideways. Pretending that your actions have fuckall to do with it is dangerously delusional. Mr. "I use random strings for my logins because I burn my identities regularly."There is a very simple rule to some stuff on the internet: if you wouldn't do something away from the keyboard, don't do it at the keyboard and expect some arbitrary internet rules to save you.
I'm taking this tone because you started your statement with: That's victim-blaming, pure and simple. You continue with: So that if there was any question as to whether or not you blame the victim, you've laid it all out there - yes, it's the victim's fault. Who are these victims? So... people who deserve it. Obviously, someone who got doxxed is the sort of person who would "expose their genitals" or "engage in gossip." Any humility? Any chance you might include yourself in that group? No, no. You're clever. And moral. People who lead moral lives have nothing to fear. Let's be clear: - They doxed my wife to get back at me - for suggesting that delivering babies out of a hospital shouldn't be worthy of a death sentence. - They tried to dox me for preventing them from ruining two people's lives through slander. - They sent a SWAT team after an /r/gaming mod for taking down a picture of a PC. NOW you're changing tactics to Reddit's inability to remember and "nihilism of mission" but a good 80% of your previous post was an argument that if you got doxxed, you deserved it. And it just ain't so.Reddit's whole fear of doxxing stems from a culture of license where there's an irrational (and many cases, immoral) desire to be free of any or all negative consequences while enjoying all the positives.
There is a very simple rule to some stuff on the internet: if you wouldn't do something away from the keyboard, don't do it at the keyboard and expect some arbitrary internet rules to save you.
Applies equally to posturing for "brave" political views, romances or hookups, exposing your genitals and/or engaging in gossip.
So no, I don't fear posting because I post stuff I generally feel is reflective of what I really think and feel and am willing to say in public. Why make things more complicated than that?
That's clear. Here's the fundamental disconnect, as I see it. Your position - correct me if I'm wrong - is that Reddit's architecture encourages oversharing and Reddit's team does nothing to protect people from the consequences. My position is that you shouldn't start out by victim blaming three times over if this is your position. I'll spell it out for you: People have been trying to dox me for a long time. Do I "deserve" it? I've been an active and high-profile participant on a site that went from interesting to vicious to virulent so yeah - if "participation" equals "deserve" then yep, walked right into that one. But you've got an oddly moral leaning to it all that makes zero sense. As you point out yourself, Reddit went ass over teakettle doxing a dead college student so constantly harping on violentacrez makes little sense. I'll spell it out for you further: violentacrez was an enemy of mine. He spent months trying to trip me up and bring down the rage of the horde upon me because he thought it would be fun. I even asked him about it - wanna know what he said? "Nothing personal." Let's back this up to a quote: I hope you now see that things are vastly more complicated than that, and, in the words of Bill Munny, "Deserve's got nothing to do with it."I'm still not sure what you're getting at.
So no, I don't fear posting because I post stuff I generally feel is reflective of what I really think and feel and am willing to say in public. Why make things more complicated than that?
There you go again. Sure - maybe you're seeing people complain from those that - and you can't let this go - some how "deserve" it. But I didn't. My wife didn't. The mods of /r/gaming didn't. The kid who just put up a speech didn't. Would you know about any of those if I hadn't said anything? Perhaps, then, your perspective on the situation is flawed. And you're still harping on abstracts - sure, this shit ought to be against the law. In many cases it is. But it's a sophisticated police department that hears "I just shot my girlfriend and I have a bomb and I'm at this address" that immediately thinks "hmmm... I wonder if someone's butt-hurt on the Internet?" 'cuz there's no reward for caution. Far better to roll a command car and evacuate 500 apartments. So the real problem IS doxing. The real problem IS people with nothing to lose playing dirty tricks on people with something to lose. The real problem IS that waving your hands and going "it's an Internet problem" does not dismiss the fact that it's a REAL problem and that you aren't speaking from a position of authority when you've chosen a random alphanumeric string to carry out discourse. I'm done giving you excuses to morally impugn those that have been doxed. I've said three times now that it isn't about that, and three times now, you've come back with "well of course it isn't - but still, they deserved it." You're clearly playing lip service to the notion that maybe this is a problem normal people need to worry about and I'm not going to continue.
People who I don't like deserve to be harassed, am I right? :^)Because the people who complain about doxing the most these days --bar none-- have been the mods of the worst subreddits (the griefers, racists, gamer-fascists, the neoreaction groups, etc.)
Do you understand that an individual's relationship with the web matters fuckall if the web has an unhealthy relationship with that individual? And that the web can develop an unhealthy relationship for exactly zero reason? Or shall I dig up the modmail where the guy who was winning the Samuel L Jackson video contest ended up with 97 pizzas, two death threats and three chuckleheads standing on his lawn because he was winning?Overall, people need healthier relationships with themselves and with the social web.
I registered this name because I didn't get a chance to say my piece directly, and I should so that I'm not purposefully misconstrued by @kleinbl00. First of all: really Klein, I left because you're being a dick. I get it, you have a bunch of grievances, but I simply do not know where you get off writing to me like I'm responsible for them. My advice is, you should really stop taking out whatever frustrations you have on random people on the internet. Now, after several rounds of explaining that I'm not pro-doxing, you're still on this train like I'm the guy who started crank calling your wife. The only reason I can figure out why is because I'm pointing out that "doxing" as it is talked about on Reddit is bullshit. I don't know if you've taken a look around, but a god awful lot of people who make a stink about "doxing" are people who should not only be doxed but should expect federal warrants for facilitating harassment and stalking. Not for minor pranks, mind you, but organizing the transmission of rape and death threats by people who are morally depraved enough to actually do such a thing. So maybe, just maybe, things are a bit more complicated than this wonderfully nebulous word "doxing." Maybe, in fact, we should stop trying to use cutesypoo neologisms for crimes which have been on the books for a while now (but which have been laxly enforced). About "identity": as I've told you directly and explicitly, I picked a random character string because registering here came right after my unencrypted insurance information was stolen. Gee, does this give a little perspective? Finally, no I don't put a lot of investment in my online identity. Nor do I stake much in my membership to this site, or the internet in whole or in any part. I do put a great deal of investment in not staying in places where people feel entitled to being dicks --the way you have been both in this thread and elsewhere. TL;DR: Left Reddit because of so many dicks; left Hubski because of one very particularly prickish dick; lesson learned, no forum is worth any amount of dickery.
No one cares if you get "misconstrued," you deleted your posts and your account, clearly you didn't have much conviction behind what you were saying in the first place. If you can't take K's prickly style of commenting without getting your panties twisted, that's not his problem. Accept the fact that your perspective is not the end all be all of reality and move on. Maybe you might even learn something, but that could be a step beyond you. That is the dumb sentence that keeps tumbling out of your mouth over and over. If you're harassing, stalking, making bomb threats, death threats, rape threats, that's wrong and should be dealt with accordingly by the legal system. If you're complaining (making a "stink") about people harassing, stalking, making threats, etc. and so on, ("doxxing") you do not deserve a federal warrant for facilitating harassment and stalking. That is dumb. And stupid. By the way, if you want to leave a forum, the first step is not to come back and argue your beef on said forum. Just a suggestion, since you seem pretty dick averse. Sounds like you're going back to where you belong, and with usernames like is_fuck_you_klein and no_really_fuck_you, I'm sure they'll welcome you with open arms. people who make a stink about "doxing" are people who should not only be doxed but should expect federal warrants for facilitating harassment and stalking
I return to the quagmire of the world's unenlightened anti-intellectual untermenschen.
(called it!) There are a number of ironies in your post. The first of which is I was all set to try (once again) to bring things back to the parts that matter but then you deleted your posts. So the substantive discussion we were going to have is now an ad-hominem hissy fit. The next of which is the Chimpire you were raging against earlier is literally the circlejerkers. Those people you think are the worst people in the world? Literally the ones trying to dox me. Exact same people. So I could have gone on for quite a while about that - I made my peace with them and them with me. Not saying they're great folx - they're "shock racists" in that they care far more about getting a rise out of people than they do about any real racist agenda. They're consummate trolls. They use their anonymity as a weapon. Much like you're doing - there's the third irony. You wouldn't have included my name in your throwaway handle if you didn't think I cared about my persona. By demonstrating you don't, you exercise the power of anonymity over me. This is the dynamic behind doxing, and why calling it a neologism seven times doesn't negate the fact that when anonymity is a spectrum, those with more can leverage those with less (much like you're doing). There have been books written about this - I'm fond of Sherry Turkle's - that draw attention to our new associations with identity as a society and what it means psychologically and socially. So huffing and puffing and talking about crime misses the point - someone with stakes in their identity is at an advantage socially over someone with no stakes because they have trust, affinity, notoriety, familiarity, what-have-you but at a disadvantage argumentatively because the anonymous can use slander and harassment unimpeded due to having literally nothing to lose. That is the dynamic behind "doxing", which isn't actually nebulous. It's the act of destroying anonymity as a punitive measure. You're right - there's nothing new under the sun and anonymity mismatch has been used as a weapon dating back to Abrahamic times but the way we use it on the Internet is something that the criminal justice system (and society in general) has not yet caught up with. Acting dismissive about it because you don't like the term does not advance our knowledge. Unlike yours, my comments still stand. Nowhere did I suggest that you were pro-doxing. In fact, I stated four times that my only problem was with your victim-blaming. It seems to come from an ill-informed place of theory, rather than experience. And even now, you can't help but bring things back around to In other words, bad people. Bad people who deserve what they get. Bad people without specifics, of course. Anecdotes are not data, but they're closer to the truth than baseless allegations. And since this is a subject where scientific data is essentially nonexistent, anecdotes are better than nothing. IE, what you got. The biggest irony is you chose to use two anonymous identities to throw a hissy fit about the undesirability of anonymity on a forum whose basis is interpersonal relationships and social connections. As such, I can't say you'll be missed. Sorry Blue Cross didn't hash your data. They didn't hash mine either. Neither did Target, neither did Home Depot, neither did Visa. By my count I've got three different identity protection services right now and that's only because I declined two. Don't for a minute, however, think that insurance leaks have the first fucking thing to do with doxing. That you'd conflate the two illustrates the willfulness of your ignorance. C-Ya.a god awful lot of people who make a stink about "doxing" are people who should not only be doxed but should expect federal warrants for facilitating harassment and stalking.
I went ad hominem because the problem here has been you and the shitty way you acted. Would you prefer me to blame Ohanian for you being a dick? Fine, I blame Ohanian for the fact that you feel compelled to act like a dick. It still doesn't change that you are being a dick. Seriously, you came in, derailed a whole conversation that had nothing to do with you (that was fine with just about everyone else, even where there were disagreements) and out of pure ego decided to engage in some primal scream therapy about your ordeal (which had no bearing on the discussion) and proceeded to turn me (who has nothing to do with any of your psychodramas on Reddit) into your proxy for Ohanian, Russian script kiddies, and your 3rd grade gym teacher. So: Uncle. You win. I bow to your clearly superior intellect and your ambitious plan to make this place just as shitty as Reddit but with NO DOX. May the priapism of your justice boner endure, and may it earn over 9,000 upboats like a boss from Hubski's off-brand bacon narwhal, kind gentlesir. I return to the quagmire of the world's unenlightened anti-intellectual untermenschen.
This is what comes from assuming egalitarism while the rest of the world hasn't. In the mainstream subreddits, there seems to be a trend to desire to be free and unbound, just don't burst their bubbles when it comes to bite them in the ass.where there's an irrational (and many cases, immoral) desire to be free of any or all negative consequences while enjoying all the positives.
Really? I've never seen anything like it - though, granted, I never dove deep into the default subreddits. That's horrible, but it does sound like what the general/average Redditor (if there is such a thing) would do. What are other such rules you can remember? I'm trying to form a coherent idea of what the system of Reddit is.The classic unspoken rule is the hate and cynicism that's unleashed when a FEMALE is visible in a non-porn/cheesecake photo subreddit
For a long time I've used my full name as my username on the internet, for accountability reasons. That is, if I say something on the internet, I say it knowing that anyone that cares to look for it will be able to find it and attribute it to me in the "real world." I wish I could say that this has always insured that I behave on the internet the way I would in person, but that hasn't always been the case. I'm far more inclined to express anger or disdain than I would be if the actual person I was interacting with was standing right in front of me. Still, it's a lot closer to "real life" when I use my real name, and that's the accountability I was talking about. It's mostly a way to hold myself to account and I'm not worried of backlash from other people. Am I afraid? No. I'm not a racist or a revolutionary. I'm not planning to take down the US government or burn any crosses. If someone wanted to "out" me for things I've said on the internet they would mostly be things I would say in person. I think the internet is a frightening place if you're advocating for things that would disgust people. If you avoid that, what is there to be afraid of? Yours, Dean A. Solecki
This sounds nice, and I would love to believe it works this way, but I have a bad feeling that this is basically the same argument as, regarding privacy, "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." The problem is that what I think is a reasonable thing to argue or advocate may seemingly unreasonably piss someone else off, and then they may go on to have an unreasonable reaction to it. Just as you can't really know the minutiae of all the laws and what seemingly innocent thing could get you into legal trouble, you can't know what statements will put you in someone's crosshairs, even if it's nothing hateful or criminal or disgusting. I try to avoid being a dick online, but I can't say the idea of public accountability in this way really appeals to me. It's not that I'm trying to escape accountability -- I just don't trust myself to the judgment and mercy of the internet. They can judge my words and leave my self alone.
I really liked this. It's something I learned when I used to keep an online journal: to never write something online about somebody I knew IRL that I wasn't prepared to say to them in person. In fact, talk to them in person first.If someone wanted to "out" me for things I've said on the internet they would mostly be things I would say in person.
A woman I know quit her job last year after she was doxxed. They sent her husband death threats that included where her kids went to school. She wasn't even super vocal online, they went after her anyway. So yeah, I'm careful about what I say. I try to be more open on hubski, but there's a lot I would love to share even on here that I can't. I appreciate standing by what you say. And I don't want to belittle those on here who do it. But it's different linking your online person to your real one when the internet hate machine is actively hunting your peers down.
I don't really like posting topics or anything like that. Not out of some fear of doxxing, but rather because I've never really seen the point in posting - I'm not a big sharer on social media or anything like that. Even in my old-school forum days I was always the incessant comment-er, but definitely not a poster. It's strange, because I'm a pretty creative person and I tend to share that side of me (at least with people I'm close with) but I just don't really see much point in posting, necessarily.
Completely agree! I don't think I'll be doxxed, I just don't care to post. I don't feel the obligation to interest others or to gain points of any kind, I'd rather just learn and discuss. Ironically, I did post a discussion on people are commenters vs people who are posters.
I've had my fair share of stalking experience. Including one guy who recently got out of a 6year prison stay for wanting to stalk/murder myself & my family. He's currently on probation and I should be tons more careful with what I post online but, I have my own tactics to keep myself safe and I would actually be impressed if someone hunted me down (THAT IS NOT AN INVITATION!) because, I have everything so well hidden/dealt with from experience of being stalked by the worst that I know how to hide... even when I seem pretty public online.
The comments in this thread about being doxxed 1) terrify me, and 2) make me very glad I'm uber careful about anonymity, privacy and security. (Hell, even in walks around the town I live in, I deliberately take different paths back to my home so no one can tail or track me, and change outfits and styles of clothing for the same purpose). Still, I'm always worried whenever I'm active on a website that SOMEhow, somebody's gonna piece together--given I'm a speed-reading, data aggregating, creepy superstar at doing this exact thing, and if I can do it, a variant of Rule 34 applies, meaning, others can do it and WILL do it--all my comments and posts and... Wait, I'll probably be homeless by then. Good luck finding me. =) Yet another awesome thing about having all your mail sent to a PO Box rather than your home address.
I had to cut off my dreads in Detroit, because I had a stalker, and I stuck out everywhere. I let this girl stay with me for a night. She was rude to my roommate, and we had to ask her to leave. Her and her boyfriend threw a big fit that night. Then five months later he comes up to me at school, and describes how he is going to kill me. I am freaked out enough to miss a few exams, I end up quitting school. That and other drama, resulted in panic attacks, agoraphobia, suicide attempts, and eventually catatonia. Right now I was too afraid to fill out my exit interview for the job, I just had to quit. My boss picked me up with her family in the car, and yelled at me for talking shit about her being a felon. I feel like I already got my revenge with her. I got a scholarship for staying at a job for so long, where my boss was completely disrespecting my employment rehabilitation coordinator. I already already trapped in a place with tons of awful people, threats on the internet are much less scary. Some people are way too invested in the online world, I'm pretty blase. change outfits and styles of clothing
No third parties were harmed in the making of this bruise. I was practice-fighting. I think it's posted more as a symbol that literally and figuratively I am not afraid of a fight - and if I were doxed, I'd come with a fight. I'd also like to say I think all of hubski would fight a person who doxed another.
You can tell by the amount of shit that I posted here. For now, that's about all I know about enough to make a quality post (that, and #russiabynatives), so I don't make much more. It's not about personal information - it's about what people will think of me: I wouldn't like it if thoughtful, mindful locals were to consider me a moron. As for personal information - I grew up convinced that other people will necessarily come to harm me if I say something personal, so I'm very critical of what to share, especially online. I don't believe the most demonstrarive accounts of mine are crossing over somewhere - therefore, I can tell you that I'm interested in BDSM, but since you won't find me in any of the online communities of the subject, you won't find more about me than that. The first person to PM me my real name and tells me where the leak is will get $10 to their PayPal account.
To be honest, I'm not. Even on reddit (yes, I still like reddit, it has some cool stuff) I post pretty freely. I don't post about sensitive issues, but if someone who knows me looks at the comments I make, they could easily find out it's me. Frankly, it's not too important to me if someone knows who I am, since the subjects I talk about are those I talk about irl, and if I wanted to post while remaining anonymous, I would. As long as you're careful with what you post, I think it's ok. Also, on the karma system, I'm going to go against hubski popular opinion and say that it's not too bad after all, as long as it's only reddit and its clones. It leads to a rise in popular opinion, so you can study what most people of a certain demographic think, like, and hate.
I'm don't post very often on almost any version of 'social media'. It's a habit I've been trying my hardest to break; I want to participate in the communities I browse but it's been difficult for me to get out of my habit of exclusively lurking. It's not so much that I'm scared to post, its more that I feel like what I post is a digital representation of me and I feel the need to maintain a high standard of quality for everything I post. The result is that I end up not posting at all and being more of an observer than a participant in all the communities I browse.
I am not scared to post because I am not really a frequent poster on the Internet. My opinions aren't too loud and I don't think the full me is out there if you looked at all the social media accounts I have had in the past and in the present. I also don't really argue with people online, so there isn't a barrage of people out there looking to take me down.