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Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

> How on Earth could a customer looking up a vendor's business information be construed doxxing?

I think "doxxing" has in some cases evolved from a sometimes-necessary norm in pseudonymous forums to a context-free knee-jerk reaction to somebody's details being out there.

I appreciate the norm when it allows people to safely be themselves among pseudonymous peers. Yes, by all means let's keep each other feeling safe. But like you, when somebody is doing business with the public, I think we should expect to know who they are. It seems insane to me that MrSquanchy69 can take in gobs of money, execute a rugpull, and have people saying, "bUt WhAt aBOuT tHeIr PriVAcY?!?" Public impact and public accountability go hand in hand.

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> But like you, when somebody is doing business with the public, I think we should expect to know who they are.

If you want public accountability, then start with the legislators.

I'll give you an example, the state claims to have the publics interest at heart, especially kids, so why dont they teach law to kids at school?

You cant assume parents have the best interests of their kids at heart. Some state employees will abuse their own kids in order to further the science that wouldn't have got past a University's ethics board!

Where is the public holding the state to account, when it hides behind its own legislated secrecy?

So when you say "by all means let's keep each other feeling safe" do you really mean that or are just satisfying some subconscious desire to divide people?

Lots of businesses run out of disused farm buildings, its cheap space.

Google started from a garage in someone's home. Many businesses run from people's spare bedroom.

What purpose is the doxxing serving other than drawing attention to a location?

Google used to do way more doxxing of people in the early days, like displaying content behind password protected forums on people.

Dont see Google getting called out about that do we?

What?

I mean yes, you talk about some good things. Legislators should be more accountable. I'm already on record as advocating not only for the existing financial transparency at the federal level, but that elected officials should have every financial transaction be part of a public record while they're in office and for years after. Because sunlight is the best disinfectant.

For the same reason, people taking money from the public should be on public record. This is hardly novel. When I had a PO box years ago, the USPS would doggedly protect the privacy of box-holders. But if you were doing business with the public using the box, you didn't get the same protections, because they didn't want people using PO boxes to scam the public and then vanish.

I think forum anti-doxing etiquette is perfectly fine for the contexts in which it originated. But when we enter the public sphere of money and power, I think transparency is an important check on all sorts of malfeasance.

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