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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 15, 2026

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The central example in this post was obviously done with the intention of ruining his chances at employment

By the reasoning in the first part of your post, that shouldn't matter at all. The Twitter thread had no effect on him because since he posted under his real name, people could have gone to a data broker, found his employer, and harassed him regardless of whether the Twitter thread existed or not.

The reason that it did matter is that human beings don't behave the way you describe. A thread on social media is a coordination point to harass a person, even if the information is already available from a data broker or anywhere else.

Scott's whole point was that even though the information was public, spreading it still enables harassment that wouldn't have existed without it being spread. You seem to recognize that this is true for Scott's example, but you don't seem willing to generalize it. Kiwi Farms and that Twitter thread are in basically the same situation. Just like that guy could have his chances at employment ruined (even though Twitter only spread information that existed anyway), people whose information is signal-boosted by Kiwi Farms have a much greater chance to be harassed (even though Kiwi Farms only spreads information that existed anyway).

That's not evidence, that's just speculation. Granted, I suppose it's not as baseless, but I'm not impressed by this answer.

That's the autistic answer. People routinely act in ways which can be predicted, but do not follow from logical deductions. You need to be able to recognize them.

I only agree with Scott's example because the signal booster basically said "let's ruin his chances at employment indefinitely." Again, that's a-logging behaviour. If she had just said "this man is racist," I wouldn't find that objectionable (besides that I disagree on the object level of racism being an issue). Obviously, if someone with a huge following tells her audience to contact his employer, they will probably go and contact his employer and harass them.

I don't agree that criticising someone, regardless of the way you frame it, especially when you have explicit disclaimers against harassment as we do on the Kiwi Farms, is somehow enabling or promoting harassment. That principle seems to imply that no one is allowed to criticise anyone for any reason, lest the criticism become a coordination point for harassment.

I only agree with Scott's example because the signal booster basically said "let's ruin his chances at employment indefinitely."

Scott's point was that just because the information was available anyway doesn't mean that spreading it doesn't cause harm. This point does not depend on anyone explicitly saying they are going to cause harm. It's about refuting the argument "oh, the information is available already". It's true that in this specific example someone said they were going to cause harm, but Scott's point is more general than that.

especially when you have explicit disclaimers against harassment as we do on the Kiwi Farms

Explicit disclaimers are things you put in when you need to cover your ass. The reason the Twitter doxing didn't include explicit disclaimers is that anti-racism social justice has such status that nobody is going to go after them no matter what they do, so they didn't need to cover their ass. Kiwi farms doesn't have this status, and people there need to cover their ass.

If Kiwi Farms posters actually didn't want to cause harm, they wouldn't signal-boost information that can be used to harm. Their actions would be consistent with not wanting to cause harm, not their disclaimers.

That principle seems to imply that no one is allowed to criticise anyone for any reason, lest the criticism become a coordination point for harassment.

Someone can be criticised without mentioning their real name, address, or employer, aside from edge cases that apply to almost nobody attacked by Kiwi Farms.

I'm still confused. As I understand it, the Reason columnist didn't publish the alleged racist's address or employer, and only posted his name insofar as he was publicly posting under his name. If that's the case, does that mean that there's no way to criticise him that doesn't involve doxing, just because he posted under his real name? So it's fine to criticise pseudonymous people, but not people posting under their real names? Or is the problem that you have a large audience? What's the threshold at which you can't reply to people without (being considered to be) inducing harassment towards them because it's signal boosting and signal boosting is doxing? Is it 100,000 followers? 50,000 followers? 10,000? Should the media be prohibited from including people's names in their articles because doing that means they're going to be doxed, and subsequently, harassed?

I can't think of any way to consistently follow this principle that doesn't result in a huge prohibition on innocuous speech.