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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Isn't "doxxing people" the actual job of a journalist?

There's a difference between learning private information and disclosing it.

Publishing information on a particular private individual because the public's benefit is sufficiently great is a hard line to even vaguely pin down - a home address, all private contact methods, and enough personal data to forge their identity on a passport application is probably never warranted to publish, but you're going to acquire that information while researching private citizens for any reason, and then pare it down to the minimum required to establish whatever story you're reporting on.

One might distinguish "doxxing" as "publishing all the information you can retrieve", without any filter or goal other than making the information as public as possible.

Did I miss the place in these stories where the author published the subject's home address?

I was not attempting to insinuate that the author had done so; I was just thinking aloud on the distinction between "doxxing" someone and what journalists often do.

Does that make it okay? Do the reasons we find it socially unacceptable in other instances apply to journalists?

Not everyone finds it socially unacceptable.

The same can be said about cannibalism.

Yes, it can. What's your point?

Who finds it socially unacceptable? Redditors?

Reddit is hardly the only place. Off the top of my head, Twitter has rules against it, too.

NB: I'm not claiming these rules are good or bad. But it's not like only freaks that are members of The Other have concerns about doxxing.

Police officers, almost universally. Abortionists. Parents of little children, frequently. "This guy we pictured in front of a gay bar." Many people who find themselves targeted by one of the (numerous) Internet hate machines. Elected officials. Unelected officials. Anyone involved in a contract negotiation with the Teamsters. People who take substantial efforts so that ex-romantic partners do not discover where they live because of a well-founded fear that that ex-partner would attempt to murder them. Television personalities. People who recently won the lottery. People named Adolf Hitler (no, not that one).

There exist numerous reasons to not love the idea of one's personal information, particularly regarding one's work or home, put out there broadly, particularly when it is attached to information one does not control and/or in a circumstance which would tend to show it to people who do not respect standard middle class norms of detachment. Redditors did not invent concern over this issue. Many of the people with strong concerns about it are demographically dissimilar to the modal Redditor.

Edit to add: It occasionally happens that journalists will transgress upon society's norms in this area and persons sympathetic to the aggrevied parties will transgress back. I have not heard a journalist say, in response to that "OK, fair commentary, wot wot." This often comes up in the context "We have published gun owners' addresses because the public has a right to know who owns guns." "We have published your address because the public has a right to know who writes newspapers."

I feel like I've read that story ~5 times over the years. First Googleable citation: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/nyregion/after-pinpointing...

I'm a little confused. I agree that there is such a thing as maliciously or recklessly posting personally identifying information about people. Is that "doxxing"? If so, why are we pretending that this story constitutes "doxxing"?

Because that is what the comment to which I replied upthread claimed.

No relevance to this story; I've just seen you say "Doxxing is a thing that only Redditors care about" a time or three on HN, and believing that to be something that you believed generally rather than specific to this article, found it necessary to say "Actually, that's a bit more of a widely-held position than you seem to believe."

Yeah, what's triggering those responses is a Reddit-tinged reaction to nuts and bolts investigative journalism as if it were somehow contravening a new Internet norm.

There's a difference between outing details of someone's life with salacious or hostile intent and telling a story.

The fact that this guy on one hand built an incredibly high quality application that had and has a major positive impact on the world is a story that needs to be told.

The fact that he's a damaged, amoral man who is allegedly a career criminal and drug dealer is a story that demands to be told. He represents the Id of mankind -- and personifies the paradox that perfect security and privacy benefits society at large, and that society also includes the bad guys.

Maybe drug dealers are the unsung heroes of drug law liberalization. The Drug War was arguably driven by racist and authoritarian goals. So dealers are arguably freedom fighters, rather than criminals. Maybe he killed some people, but I suspect that was in self defense.

Personally, I interpreted the question as a shorthand for: "Aren't you afraid LeRoux could see that as doxxing, and of potential dangerous consequences to yourself?"

Yes, that's what I meant. But I do also consider the distinction between doxxing and journalism to be highly subjective. The judgment typically comes down to ingroup vs outgroup. Once someone is identified as "other", they're fair game.

This all occurs to me as a show trial. They're making an example of him, as authoritarian systems tend to do. And one aspect of that is being dragged through the mud. Being slandered. It's dog pack behavior, and I find it disgusting.

Some people who do that consider themselves journalists. But then, people who doxx people might also consider themselves journalists. It's a hard call.

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