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Comment by floatingatoll | Hacker News Reader

Dear HN,

This post goes out of its way to avoid naming the site in question.

If you know the answer to the above question, think carefully before providing that name here or anywhere. Ask yourself how invoking their name specifically contributes value to this story. Ask yourself why you consider it right to shame them by name, when OP did not consider it right to do so.

If you can’t think of a reason that positively improves the world for us all, and all that you’ve got is “we should hold them up as an example for others to avoid”, this post already does so and without doxxing them.

If you truly feel that it’s necessary, proceed, but I think honoring the author’s clear intention to avoid naming them is the appropriate decision here as well.

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Hmmm. Inclined to agree if you replace the company in this argument with a person.

Very disinclined in actuality, since this is a company providing a service to people who have handed over custody of their personal data (It sounds like very high-value data! Cooking videos aren't easy to make!) under the assumption that they will get something out of the deal, i.e., the videos would be hosted and they would be warned if they were going to be deleted (or at least apologized to if they were deleted by accident and not lied to).

>>> If you can’t think of a reason that positively improves the world for us all, and all that you’ve got is “we should hold them up as an example for others to avoid”, this post already does so and without doxxing them.

Hmm, how about "we should hold them up as an example for users to avoid".

Doxxing doesn't exist for corporations, it only exists for individual people. The proper term of art here is whistleblowing or journalism. And the reason the author avoided mentioning the company name is probably to cover someone's ass who signed an NDA.

Yeah, generally agree with all this. I don’t think we need to shame them, as the gp initially mentions. But I personally have an interest in understanding the exact issue, seeing the response, etc. I.e. I believe there’s value in knowing the company, the actual incident, and so on.

>Ask yourself why you consider it right to shame them by name, when OP did not consider it right to do so. [...] ,

The other possibility that you didn't seem to consider is that the author (Rachel Kroll) is withholding the website's name to protect herself and not the company. If she only heard about the company's video deletion via second hand information, she'd understandably be hesitant to name the company in her blog. The person telling her the story may have not gotten the facts exactly right.

>and without doxxing them.

If a user can factually state that <RealName> cooking website deleted videos, that's not "doxxing" the company. That's a very peculiar word to use and it doesn't apply to this situation. If someone factually states that the MS Windows 10 upgrade deletes users' files, that's not "doxxing Microsoft".

I respectfully disagree. It should be public record when a product or service fails to perform to the expectation of the customer. This is why we have outlets such as Yelp and Amazon reviews. There is no incentive to improve the product if they aren't put on blast.

That's not what happens though -- people have shrieking tantrums that you aren't doing X for free, or enough, or high quality enough, or that an engineer made a mistake, etc etc etc... And if you ask why they trusted their incredibly precious things to a service for which they don't pay, you get yelled at more.

eg "You said free, and now you're telling me I can't store 20TB of videos on your service! Un-fucking-believable". Cue all the statements (from free customers) that they'll never pay :rolleyes:

See also the threads on here when a company has increased prices.

“Public record” is not equivalent to “in the tech press”. If there was a central registery of IT operational errors, where data was carefully reported by all public and private companies, then your stance would be absolutely understandable. But in today’s press climate, the focus would be on dragging their name through the mud for clickbait, rather than on interviewing them about their plans to improve going forward and evaluating _those_ claims for technical and business veracity.

ps. Happily, I haven’t a clue who they are, not have I tried to look.

If a car exploded, should we withhold the name of the car company?

If an article was posted by $random_internet_person about a car that exploded with "some details changed", where necessary context is missing (e.g. what the car company did in the aftermath to ensure it doesn't happen again), then yes, we should withhold the name of the company until a fuller picture is available. It's not ethical to go about blaming and shaming unless you know for a fact what happened and the context surrounding the incident. And unless you're Rachel, you don't.

Please explain to me how a corporation can be "doxxed", because I don't understand how that's possible.

Sure thing.

The framing of your reply hinges on an unstated assertion:

“It is always ‘right’ to name and shame a corporation.”

I contradict that assertion in my plea, which results instead in this assumption:

“Consider the ethics of the situation before naming and shaming a corporation.”

Having laid out that, I will next address the literal question asked: “doxxed”, as you correctly identified when forming your reply, is used here as a shorthand for “digging up information about an entity that was intentionally withheld from you, with intent to shun and/or shame that entity once you discover who they are”. The definition you are using more restrictively says “person” rather than “entity”, which is certainly understandable.

I hope this helps you comprehend my position better.

It does, but I don't see how an entity such as a corporation can be "shamed." A corporation is not capable of feeling shame. The individuals who work there can, but no one is asking for any individual to be named. I suppose it could said those who work there might be indirectly shamed by association, but that's a stretch.

Therefore I don't see how there's any issue in naming a corporation for their role in a situation that affected customers/users in an adverse way. Particularly since no users are bring identified either.

In short, no real people are being doxxed and while a corporation might have some legal entitlements (none which apply here), it has no expectation of privacy.

Let's stop treating corporations as if they were somehow people. If Rachel doesn't want to share the company that's fine, I'm sure she has her reasons, but that doesn't mean it's unethical for us to know.

Even it were a person, people have a right to know.

If a car blew up because of a faulty gas tank, is it “respectful” to not name the car company?

If a vet killed your poodle because of negligence, is it “repectful” to not name the vet?

Free markets depend on the free flow of information. “Protecting” a company that did something wrong isn’t “respectful,” it’s unethical. Knowing a company (or a person) that messed up when delivering a product or service to the public is important.

If I post on Twitter that my car blew up with a car wreck photo from some random website that I’ve photoshopped slightly to block Tineye, the Internet will set itself aflame trying to figure out what kind of car it is, create a press firestorm around the issue, and tank the company’s stock.

Trusting one person enough to go find which company they’re trying not to name only proves that you were able to find which company they were trying to keep you from naming.

It doesn’t in any way provide veracity to their story, but if they’ve shorted that company’s stock, it’ll certainly provide them a profit.

The issue here is that you don’t “know” anything if you _only_ dig up the company, because you don’t know anything more truthful than you did before someone told you a possibly-untrue thing.

Unfortunately, people are prone to hearing “I found a likely suspect company” and respond with “therefore the story is true, burn them to the ground”.

Feeding them a name to riot around by naming a probable suspect _without any proof_ does nothing to improve the story, and materially harms suspect companies, their founders, and their employees. I don’t mind if you share a company name when you’ve proven they did this, but if you can’t prove it, don’t just post a random company name on the Internet and say “I think it’s them”. That’s inciting a riot without cause, and why I encouraged otherwise here.

Nope- there are many reasons why companies need to be held publicly accountable, and a lot of bad things that happen when they are not.

I agree with your point in general, but in this case all we have to go on is Rachel's account of what happened, which was posted to illustrate a particular point and is probably missing important context. I'm not saying the company isn't deserving of a public shaming, I'm just saying we don't know if it is deserving of a public shaming because all we have to go on is one person's humorous/scary anecdote with "some details changed". Posting the company's name at this point seems premature.

> Ask yourself why you consider it right to shame them by name, when OP did not consider it right to do so.

To prevent people from getting ripped off.

Doxxing is the wrong metaphor here because it implies someone being put in a vulnerable position because of their private activity. It isn't "doxxing" to name the restaurant in town which persistently fails health department inspections, or the contractor who can't install shingles competently. Why? Because that's business, and business is in the public sphere. Providing bad reviews prevents those bad actors from harming other members of the public.

You can't "dox" a company by calling them out for lying and incompetence. Rachel simply does not want to get sued. This isn't some virtuous moral high ground you're standing on, stop pretending otherwise.

Seems relevent to know the company so we can avoid them in the future.

I agree, you can't complain that every communication is locked and scripted and then try to hurt someone who has tried to be as candid as possible. It's just pushing towards a more and more unauthentic world.

I agree with you in general, but the other problem with the post that you're responding to is that it's likely to elicit guesses... and guesses in the guise of knowledge... some of which may be wrong.

Discussion like this that try to "name names" can result in people making assumptions about others (be they people or companies) that could very well be unjustified.

Oh thats good! the Chinese government should use this one.

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