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Comment by bluecalm | Hacker News Reader

I was thinking along the same lines. Isn't it just doxxing? Going deep into someone's online history and making hypothesis about who they are in real life, then publishing their name and what they do?

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I fail to understand "why". There is this awesome band, Angine de Poitrine, that makes being anonymous a big part of the fun. Some people are trying hard to dox them, and I heard that someone already did it. What if they decide to quit, now that the fun is over if they are not anonymous anymore? Congrats, you fucked up the party and nothing was gained.

Let's keep in mind that doxxing is not a universal concept nor are its mechanisms universally perceived as negative/frowned upon outside of specific online areas.

I don't know of any law against it except for specific populations like law enforcement and even those usually have exceptions for journalism.

I believe it widely understood to be what most people call "a douche move".

Widely only in limited — mostly english speaking — online communities. Otherwise most people hate it if it is likely to harm someone considered as an innocent individual but less if that figure is already kind of public — people love to know where and all the details on how famous people live — or to people they view more negatively. For instance nobody complains when the real owner, origin and location of say, a shady company, is made known to the general public.

So the real truth is "it depends". ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I feel like the answer is way more cut and dry, but people dont like that.

Yeah, as a Scandinavian it is often hard to understand how people can feel that their existence is a secret. We've had public and fairly rich (family relations, profession) census data for hundreds of years. Tax records, school grades, property ownership. All of it public information available to and for everyone.

The right to privacy here never meant "noone may know that I exist".

Australia has a law against "menacing or harassing" doxxing.

https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....

(nice permalink URL guys.)

Good find. I don't think that NYT article would fall into the scope of the law. This is really adressed towards kiwifarms level of doxxing.

Indeed, unless they're already a public person (such as celebrity or public figure of note).

Mini-celebrities are probably far more likely to attract attention than a lot of “rich people.”

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