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Doxxing is facilitating harm: it may provide information to someone who may physically harm the target. In the most direct case, revealing a spy in a repressive country. Even in a free country, providing someone’s location may aid a schizo into becoming a hitman, or associating their name with controversial online activity may enrage their family or a local into confronting them.
It also creates a Chilling Effect: sure, an employer and spouse are legally allowed to fire and divorce someone (respectively, hopefully), but I think the world is better when people feel safe speaking freely online, and I’m sure most in Kiwifarms and here agree at least for themselves.
And just because information is accessible from any internet-connected device doesn’t mean it’s “public”. In the most obvious case, a password-protected website is “public” if you know the password. Then there’s no clear line between this and, for example, a URL that somebody forgot about. The FBI discovered Dread Pirate Roberts via a years-old public forum post under is pseudonym (or used alternate construction, but still, it was possible).
I don’t support the (censorship) infrastructure that would prevent doxxing, some people deserve to be doxxed (e.g. Epstein pedophiles), revealing information that could help reveal someone’s identity or other details isn’t doxxing (there’s no clear line), and sometimes someone hides their identity or other details so poorly it’s not obvious they were supposed to be hidden (again, no clear line). Also, there exist unethical people, so if someone controversial has public information that is incriminating and not well hidden, they’ll be doxxed eventually anyways…unless you tell them privately.
Generally, I think it’s wrong to dox someone unless they did something unethical enough that justifies the probable reactions: commit a serious crime, cheated on their partner, etc.. And even then, limit the range so justice is reasonable (e.g. if someone mildly betrayed their friend, probably tell their friend but don’t ruin their life). Otherwise, even though it’s just revealing true information, you’re making the world worse in a rather obvious way.
And in particular, I don’t think doxxing people for nonspecific speech (opinions, media, etc.) is ever moral, even if they’re obnoxious content creators, at least because it ultimately amplifies their views and makes them look better to bystanders.
If you're going to run a multibillion dollar drug empire, then you should take the appropriate opsec measures. In this regard, the feds have the ability to subpoena/EDR, effectively making all "private" data on the site accessible to them, but I don't think we should suspect alternate construction when his opsec was that bad.
On the Kiwi Farms, we take appropriate opsec measures to not get doxed, including using an alternate email address and not revealing personal details. We do want the ability to speak freely, but we also recognize that it's not really possible to do that under your real name in a world where saying "that" in your native language can earn the ire of the cancel mob. As Scott Alexander said, society is fixed,
biologyopsec is mutable.This isn't a useful or achievable maxim in practice. Once you tell someone, you can't really control what they do with that information. If the friend wants to ruin their life, you can say you don't want that, but you can't stop them from doing it. People are terrible at keeping secrets.
It's probably better for you to only tell the friend, because if the friend ruins their life in response, that's their responsibility and not yours. But the consequences are likely to be the same. Whether that means you're less morally culpable for what happens afterward depends on your moral philosophy.
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