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inigyouyesterday at 9:57 PM1 replyview on HN

downvoted because the government doing stuff is communism


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tarpittyesterday at 11:43 PM

I don't have the ability to downvote, and I disagree that the downvote should be used, but I disagree with your disagreement about the downvote.

The proposal that seems to infringe on free speech, but mostly I take issue because there just isn't really a precedent for what such a thing would look like. What constitutes doxxing? It is easy to accidentally doxx someone by mentioning some offhand fact in conversation, because you may not know what series of facts can be connected to form a doxx. Typicially, people doxx themselves by accident, and someone else is merely pointing it out. I know I have many times. You live and learn.

There isn't really a right to privacy in the way that there's a right to free speech. Free speech is important to processes of public transparency and justice which I think this would interfere with. But it's also true that justice is blind and doxxing can interfere with a judicial process.

Also, if everyone is going to have access to super-stylometry tools in the future, which is the premise of the article that GP reacts to, it will be fruitless to uphold such a right because anyone can just run doxxyou.exe themselves. There's no need to spread doxx because it can be reproduced individually.

The term doxxing came from a certain hacker culture where it was implied that you connected some real-life identity to a criminal pseudonym. It essentially meant "snitching". So the idea that doxxing itself would be a crime is interesting. It's a reversal of the original meaning.

But it's also true that the public has discovered sybil-suseptible techniques (like swatting) where you can screw with ordinary people's lives by knowing their identity. Which is interesting because we live in a new culture of "share everything online" vs old the hacker ethos of "don't use your real name online". The attackers have become stronger and the defenders weaker.

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