What are your thoughts on people being doxxed for ripping down missing israeli posters?
It's all over twitter lately, people getting recorded ripping down posters with a graphic about the missing Israeli children and then their real names are found and are quickly fired from their jobs.
Doxxing is bad. I don't care if the person is a murderer or a protestor. Doxxing can have many, very nasty unintended consequences that can hurt more than just the person being doxxed.
I’m with you, while the people doing the bad things deserve to be found out by their friends, family, employers, etc…The means that this discovery happens matters and doxxing is not ok, full stop.
Great question! Initially, I was 100% against doxxing because it turns into vigilante justice when people gang up on a suspect that hasn't been properly tried in a court, so innocent people could become victims for something they didn't do or pay excessive consequences. However, with your question, I think it points out some nuance.
In the case of the Jan 6 insurrectionists, the FBI was trying to find them to press charges, so I think it was appropriate to doxx them. Protesters that didn't partake directly in the insurrection were also outed and I'm iffy on that one. Their presence still had an impact on the insurrection because it gave energy to the thing and possible increased intimidation. Imagine if there was 1 person outside your house with a guillotine vs 100 people with a guillotine. The latter would likely instill more fear.
Ultimately, I think the main issue is not with being doxxed, but with the vigilante justice that people like to enact when someone is doxxed. Rather than say firing this dentist, the people that had the power to do so could have just accepted that the dentist had his own opinion on the matter irrelevant to his employment and left it at that. Yet, they acted on the desire to punish him by firing him. I think that's messed up because for all we know, he might have had a valid reason for that behavior or at the very least, it was not affecting his work. I think it's normal to be frustrated with the situation and have emotional responses to it. Rather than punish and isolate him, they could have had a compassionate talk with him to hear him out and possibly come to a collaborative stance to help ameliorate the situation. After all, conflicts aren't resolved by increasing antagonism. It's resolved by engaging in understanding and healthy interdependence. If anything, all they did was further radicalize the dentist.
That's a pretty fair response. Although I would say that I am against doxxing people who just happened to show up and didn't actually enter the capital/participate in any illegal behavior. You can't predict what the crowd will do and I think we would all agree it's wrong if a BLM protest got out of hand and they decided to punish everyone who was there simply because they "increased intimidation".