Yay Reddit! Doxxing vs just identifying somebody

Another point: Ken does not designate between the community and the admins, but I think he means to. As he said what he said, however, CONSEQUENCES! His article, I can admit, seems to blame all of reddit for the actions of the admins.

I'm more amazed by the 1970s hotel architecture.

Yes, from 1962.

So, again, what would your solution be?

The head of a website has editorial fiat. The idea that the people who determine what stays on the site and who have the job of removing content has a master say in what direction the site has isn't that bizarre. Think of FREEP or Conservapedia. People on those sites complain directly to Jim Rob or Schlafly and people who hate the site complain about Jim Rob or Schlafly.
It's reasonable to complain to the people who run things, to try to get them to change what's under their control. They are the public face and have accepted that responsibility. It's not reasonable to expose someone to danger because you disagree with them. The same sense of anonymity that egged them on will egg on others, just focused, with anger, and a sense of moral superiority that justifies everything.

Otterloop, what constitutes exposing somebody to danger?
Does this count?
This?

Giving away their real name in an environment wherein they have severely angered the majority.

I'm sure this guy got death threats, hell I've gotten death threats for pretending I didn't like a celebrity online, and the response is to go "Oh, here's his real name, where he works, a picture of him. where he lives..."?

Oh give me a fucking break, there is zero chance of this asshole getting killed because you revealed his name. It's not like he's, say, a Democrat or something.

I'll ask again:
Does this count?
This?

No, arrest records are public record.
Unless you mean "should the police have released her picture when asking for help in finding her?" In which case no again, they were asking for help in finding people photographed committing a crime.

No, again the newspaper is releasing public information.
Unless you mean "Should the newspaper have been informed about the Twitter account?" in which case I'd say no, she isn't in danger because of that.

Edit: don't give me that "I'll ask AGAIN" bull, you edited that in after.

Another aspect of that is that unlike the Gawkers of this world or anonymity-centered sites, usually a mainstream newspaper or media outlet has journalistic ethics in place to keep from giving in to a vindictive mob mentality, and a stronger sense of accountability and responsibility (unless it's the Daily Mail or something). And the perpetrators in both cases committed clearly defined crimes.

Which is why blanket rules don't work. Ethical guidelines for sure, and laws to use when people go to far.

Not everybody deserves to keep their anonymity online and not all news media are able to handle their responsibility and will willingly lead a witch hunt just to get more readers - but because media sometimes go to far, isn't a reason to believe that never exposing anybody is the right solution either.

Laws when people go too far are well and good, but the reality is that the average victim of an Internet mob or one (or more) Internet adversaries has most of the time no remedy accessible to him. For example, if there is a defamatory blog on Blogger, Google will never remove any content unless one has a court order from the Californian county the company resides in. How accessible is that to anyone without significant means to expend? Not to mention the content can be posted on an infinity of sites, and the perpetrator can anonymize all of its tracks.

So you're arguing in favor of making it harder for people to post anonymously on the internet?

I'm sorry, are you actually trying to claim that ViolentAcrez, the guy behind r/creepshots, the guy who created a community to enable the anonymous stalking of women and posting photos without our consent, the guy who started and maintained r/jailbait for the posting of photosets of underage girls, was not hurting anybody? I want to be real clear that's what you're asserting. Tell me you actually think this piece of shit wasn't hurting anybody, Otterloop. I want to hear you say it.

I want to be clear here - what you are saying is that no one should ever have to be responsible for the things they write and do online, and that there should be an absolute, ironclad guarantee that they can say or do whatever they want, hurt whoever they want, and that they should never, in any way, shape, or form, face any consequences, either from their victims or others, because to violate that anonymity would be 'vigilante justice'. Do you actually believe that? Is that actually what you are arguing?

Then maybe you should shut your fucking mouth, what do you think? Or, and this is just a thought, actually have some idea of what the hell you're talking about before you talk about it.

And, no, you're not defending him - you're just defending his right to continue to provide a home for, and encourage, the stalking of women online, and the theft of their private photos. You're not defending him, you just want to make sure he has the ironclad and unbreachable right to do these things anonymously, forever.

Just adding this to the "why he was targeted by Gawker" fire: he was running a number of these sites, and said sites had a few run ins with the law over illegal postings and such. In addition, VA wasn't actually all that anonymous, he'd outed himself to the reddit community in person, and those people are who told Gawker. Gawker outed him to the public at large in their role as a (laughable) journalistic enterprise.

I'm trying to find the one about locating kiddie porn on some teacher's phone when investigating something else, but I can't find the story anymore to figure out if it wound up sticking in court. I could find the one about a highschool teacher posting pictures of his students and getting busted by one of the students. The problem Gawker and a lot of other people had was that Reddit and Co weren't cracking down on this behavior, and Gawker mostly posted the article to bring up that it seemed Reddit's owners actually had a bit of personal contact with the guy who was setting all of these forums up. They were trying to make a point that A) normal-ish looking people can be total creeps, and B) this was a problem with Reddit, not just a random Reddit user.

Vigilante justice is bad. Full stop. But you cannot shut down any investigative journalism on the grounds that it may happen. There must be a judgement call made about the societal value of the reveal and the level of the threat. This is a judgement call you basically have to make with every secret ever. Gawker made a call that the reveal may help alleviate harassment of women in these forums, or at least call attention to the problem by presenting the threat of non anonymity for their behavior. We can discuss if this was a good or a bad call in this situation, but the VA stuff pretty much has nothing to do with the thread subject of internet stalking some dude who left a shitty tip. The only thing linking the two is the somewhat comical behavior wherein stalking someone is totally cool if they're not your own tribe, and a decent amount of reflection as to how often that happens and when we can control ourselves from that mob behavior of mistreating people outside the direct community.

Jesus Christ thank you for proving my point. Here someone who wasn't even effected by his actions is so angry at him that doing anything but shitting on his face every third word is a crime itself.
You're quoting me from far before the conversation was even about ViolentAcrez, when it was about the policy of exposing people online in general and ViolentAcrez was just someone in a paragraph I quoted and not an actual example used and that makes me the worst person ever for not starting, and ending, my reply with "Even though I have no idea who that person is I hope they rot in hell for all eternity forever and ever Amen" and you're telling me it was not exposing him to danger to tell everyone his real name and location?

Yes. I'm saying exactly that. In the paragraph on general internet anonymity before I was told whom he was and in talking about the idea of using "here's your real name and picture" as the ultimate comeback.
You got me. You broke the code. I'll go take the World's Best Detective Award from Batman so I can give it to you. Parade's at 1.

Yup. 100%. You got me again. Your anger is so righteous it burns straight through to the truth.

Actually I got a question for you: did you ever do or say anything as a teenager you regret now? Do you think you should still be being punished for it?

Teenagers are stupid, always have been, because they don't know anything. And today that ignorance can be spread far and wide, and they're too stupid to know they're stupid so they are going to. I just don't think punishing them in perpetuity is a good idea. It's a little bit of compassion and understanding that made juvenile records get sealed under 18. You may have been the lone teen amongst the masses who never told a racist joke, or said the word "bitch", or laughed at the weird walk of that one guy, if that's the case I'll go get the Perfect Teen Award from Bella Swan so I can give it to you. That parade is at 2.

Just to be clear here: what did he do to you? Or is all this anger, anger that's so white hot that it's now on me for saying I'm NOT defending him, third party anger?

Amazing. Not only are you proud of your ignorance, you don't even read the threads you participate in.

Before the conversation was even about him? He was mentioned IN THE FIRST POST. He was mentioned in the part of the post that you quoted and replied to. Did you, at any point, think maybe you should figure out who the fuck this person was that was being talked about, this person you decided to hold up as an example of the injustice of the mob? Hell, I'll go one step further - do you even know who the hell he is now? As for 'exposing him to danger', you really are incapable of thinking through the logical consequences of your arguments, aren't you? Your argument is that the people who doxxed him were exposing him to harm by failing to actively defend his right to say and do horrible things anonymously. Any danger that ViolentAcrez is exposed to is the consequence of his actions, not the consequence of his exposure. It is outright crazy that you actually believe there is an affirmative responsibility on the internet as a whole and news organizations in specific to help scumbags and monsters avoid the consequences of their actions.

Finally, why do you keep trying to redirect the conversation to the subject of hypothetical teenagers who 'just made one mistake'? At what point has this ever been about these hypothetical little angels of yours? We're talking about real bad actors here, and whether or not everyone else is obligated to help them maintain the illusion of anonymity that lets them feel safe to stalk and victimize people, secure that they'll never, ever have to face the kind of public humiliation they happily inflict on others.

Damn, citation needed for that one.

You know, this talk about dumb teenagers has got me wondering. Who were you at Qt3?

Amazing. Not only are you proud of your ignorance, you don't even read the threads you participate in.
They were mentioned in the part of the post that you quoted and replied to.

See how that works?

Well this thread is about what I expected.

Say what you will, but /r/niggerjailbait was a great place to get low-sodium soup recipes for slow cookers.

Edit: Wait, sorry. That was /r/hearthealthysoups. The other one is where you go to find racist pedophiles. My bad.

Look I'm not defending VA's actions, that's stupid, the OP isn't even about him and my response was an "in general" type thing. I do not think vigilantism is the answer and the OP, wherein a women is fired from her job as blow back to vigilantism, bears that out.

The choice is not between "do absolutely nothing and silently approve" and "tell the world a person's real name, address, place of business, show a picture etc etc"

Those Charles Bronson movies were a lot more enjoyable before I realized that all he actually did was publish the identities of those he had disagreements with. :(

I'll assume Otterloop is talking about this sort of thing.

Or, maybe this sort of thing.

For all the talk of Lynch Mobs and Vigilante Justice I must have missed where any actual violence was done to Violentacres.

Teenagers and jerkwads are free to express themselves, regardless of their age. They are not free from the consequences of what they post.

As a great philosopher once said "With great power comes great responsibility". His age? 16.

I don't think you've got an answer, period, and in the meantime people are getting hurt by legions of anonymous fucktards while you wring your hands at the possibility that one of these fucktards would suffer consequences for spouting his hatred online.

Here's a scenario for you. People email you death threats and rape threats. Day in, day out. Anonymously. In this scenario the choice of respecting the anonymous hatemongers is silent approval. Because you are sure as fuck not doing anything to help.

Spider-Man is also the story of redemption. As in not paying your entire life for one mistake.

The idea of Hell, being punished for all eternity for one sin, is disgusting an immoral. If, 25 years from now, one of those teenagers who Tweeted something stupid is punished by losing his job, or not getting a job, would you call that justice?

Or, in the Reddit situation, the other choice was to petition the owners. They are a business and, any business, will buckle under pressure eventually (as, apparently, they did). The answer is not to sick another legion of anonymous fucktards at one guy.

Been there. Done that.

And, again, there is an option between "doing nothing" and vigilantism. The fact that you don't acknowledge that doesn't change it.

I want to point out that vigilantism is the act of enforcing the law with no legal authority to do so. Exposing some asshole on the internet is something extremely different. If people were to murder ViolentAcres or imprison him or some such, that'd be vigilantism.

So, your argument is off base from the start, Otterloop.

Well, there's mistakes and there's mistakes. I don't think that a girl showing her boobs online in a moment of stupid thoughtlessness is the sort of thing that should wreck a life, but I would have zero problems with fitting the guy who was laughing about the girl in Stubenville being 'raped to death' with an implant which would cause a hologram of his video to play above his head every time he ever met any female for the first time for the rest of his life.

But that's just me.

I can enjoy Death Wish after all!

Oh, right. Who were you at Qt3 again?

The problem with some of the vigilante justice is that there is no real burden of proof. Anybody remember when Snoop Dog tweeted the address of Zimmerman? Only he got the wrong address?

Or if the 'justice' is something that isn't really justice, like the Penny Arcade attack dogs.

Snoop Dog? Really?

They all look alike.

Haha, got me, my apologies, not sure how I confused the two =)

But regardless of the source of the tweet, beyond being someone famous so they have followers, the point still stands that the targets of vigilante justice aren't put through any type of vetting.

No, he paid terribly for that mistake and he has spent the rest of his life trying to atone for it.

Justice? I thought we were talking about freedom of speech. We allow Nazi marches and Westboro Baptist protests and there is nothing Just about them.

Here's the counter to your persecution fantasy.
What, if due to the mild societal displeasure said racist teenager experiences, he examines his sense of entitlement and turns himself into a better person? He teaches his children empathy and understanding and they found the Racial Harmony Institute of America? Or, out of fear of not being able to get a job for 25 years he doesn't tweet his racist thoughts? Isn't there some societal good done by having less free-floating racial animus? Especially if that reduction is enforced, not by Governmental Watch Dogs or Court Ordered Language Restrictions, but by the disapproval of good people everywhere?