Originally Posted by
quahaug
What's the big deal about Doxing? Wasn't too long ago we had these things called "phone books" where you could look up anyone who had a phone. Now we have the internet invented by Algore where I'm sure there is plenty of info on all of us. Heck, look at Facebook and all that other nonsense. People put all kinds of personal stuff on there willingly.
I was going to post almost exactly the same thing. You had white pages, and people rolled into your town or city and looked you up. You had door to door salesmen who looked you up by name. You had milkmen.
Who you were when visiting Aunt Betty in Denver was who were at home.
The idea that people "speak their full minds" when anonymous is an oxymoron. You aren't even "you" if you're anonymous. If you define yourself by your anonymity, then you're not defining yourself. You're UN-defining yourself.
I'm here under my name. I already posted my address. No different than the white pages. And I think I pretty much "speak my full mind." This pseudo-anonymity, which is what it is -- I mean, if the feds want to know who accountinquestion is in the morning, they'll know by the afternoon -- it's for what?
It's like kids running around at Halloween wearing masks so they can "speak their full minds."
What are people so terrified of? To put it differently, what made people in the 1960's or 70's so much less terrified that they put their names and addresses in the white pages? The world wasn't safer then than it is now.
If the only way that you exercise free speech is to be anonymous, then it's not free speech. It's the opposite of free speech.