Anonymity & Doxing

So the other day I saw a video lambasting TJ, The Amazing Atheist, for a shite argument in one of his videos. The video in question was TJ’s response to Naked Ape calling him out on a double standard. The contention by Naked Ape was that TJ has condemned people for doxing in the past yet included Atheism Is Unstoppable (hereafter ‘AIU’) in a collaborative video despite AIU having doxed people. We’ll get to that claim itself shortly.

TJ’s response was most definitely shite: he strawmans the issue by equating direct collaboration with consumption of an individual’s media products; he sidesteps the double standard accusation by effectively arguing that he doesn’t have standards, and finally tops it all off with a balls-out argumentum ad populum (“I’m The Amazing Atheist, who the fuck are you?!”). Suffice to say, TJ didn’t come out of that looking good, and he didn’t even try to actually defend AIU’s position.

Naked Ape has since clarified his position: He considers revealing real names to be doxing; he has a zero-tolerance approach to doxing; AIU has revealed names; hence Naked Ape considers AIU to be a doxer. TJ included him in a collaboration ( of mostly stupid questions, of which AIU’s may have been the stupidest. Sorry, it’s just how I feel about it); collaborations tend to help expand subscriber bases; Naked Ape states TJ’s actions therefore assist AIU in doxing. Finally Naked Ape concluded that he will be taking a break to fuck his boyfriend and play video games. Hear, hear!

Since TJ’s video argument was essentially a verbose and obnoxious way of hiding under a rock, I don’t much care to parse the double standard issue. Instead, let’s cut right to the heart of the matter: is AIU actually a doxer?

AIU has commented briefly on this recent argument before basically saying “Fuck it, I’m out”. He does admit to revealing the names of five people. He asserts however that this is not doxing as only the names were revealed and not anything one would consider actually private or sensitive information. Naked Ape asserts that this equates to doxing as a name is enough to find more information and the act of revealing a name as part of public discourse invites the more amoral members of the audience to go ahead and finish doxing the individual.

Support for Naked Ape’s view can be found in the UK’s Data Protection Act, which says: ‘personal data’ means data which relates to a living individual who can be identified - (a) from those data, or (b) from those data and other information which is in the possession of, or is likely to come into the possession of, the data controller. However, the DPA covers personal data to be collected and stored, and does not explicitly apply to public discourse, so this question is far from settled.

Since it is difficult to narrowly define doxing, let’s rephrase the question to:
Is AIU’s naming of five people acceptable?

Naked Ape and ‘Kraut and Tea’ say that breaching anonymity can be very dangerous for some people who live in the wrong country etc. AIU agrees with the sentiment expressed but does not see how this applies to the five people he named. He assures us that people like Kraut and Tea, whose anonymity protects them from illiberal laws or violence are very much on his ‘do-not-name’ list. He also reminds us that he himself lives in Germany too.

AIU says that he can’t stand being anonymously called a racist. He says that if people want to attack him and not his ideas by labelling him a racist, they could at least sign their name. Critics of this position tend to view the naming of anonymous people as also effectively directing attention to the person and not the idea (i.e. the accusation and its merit, or lack thereof). Generally further commenting that (a) anonymous accusations are easily ignored, or (b) that revealing names is not the appropriate response to being slandered. AIU retorts that since he uses his real name then simply the accusations, if allowed to pile up, are damaging and equates the internet to the Wild West where people must protect themselves instead of relying on the law.

While I can understand the different viewpoints on this issue, i cannot agree completely with any position that I have yet heard (or read). When making costly criticisms of someone, i can agree that it is unethical to do so anonymously without good reason. I draw the line now though as, while it may well seem safe to remove someone’s anonymity, that is not anybody else’s decision but their own. At the same time I can see how frustrating it must be to constantly face slander associated with a real name, which must be used in offline life. Especially from people who hypocritically hide from the same exposure they inflict on others.

In conclusion I find that while AIU’s naming of people was unethical, I do not agree that it was clearly immoral. In other words: while it may tarnish his reputation for maturity and/or professionalism, it does not reflect especially negatively upon his moral character.

CORRECTION:
I mentioned that AIU only commented briefly on this - I was incorrect, the videos I saw were redacted from a much longer video published slightly earlier in which AIU fully expresses himself.