There are two definitions of doxing (alt. doxxing):
a. Form of harassment in which personal information is used to intimidate, threaten, or distress others.
b. Searching / archiving public information and reposting it.
The Kiwi Farms has always had rules against contacting people. We've always had rules against threatening or extorting people. We've always had rules against encouraging other people to do those things ("someone should...").
In the last year especially, the word doxing has become popularly realigned from the second definition (which originated online in the 2000s) to the first (which was popularized by journos).
The law has extended harassment definitions in many jurisdictions to include online harassment which utilizes personal information. This is in the same way "cyberbullying" is a crime, but "cyberbullying" does not mean any form of online critique: it specifically refers to students in highschool or college harassing their peers online in such a way to intimidate them from going to school. Doxing has become criminalized, but as an extension of already criminal behavior under the first definition, usually applied to people who already know each other in real life.
The fact that this subculture invented the term and abides within the law is irrelevant to what the average person now thinks of when they hear "doxing". That we are 'in the right' does not matter. The use of a word, which now describes a crime, to describe things which are not criminal, is detrimental to our interests and long-term prospects.
In 2025 I need the community at large to stop using the word "doxing" to describe legal information gathering and switch to anything else. The following terms have been suggested, including both verbs which describe the act of looking something up, and the noun which describes a compilation of this information.
Phonebooking.
Unmasking. *
Deanonymize / Deanon
Infodump / Infodumping
Sunshining.
Exposing.
Receipts.
Deets. * per shawnphase
I'm not going to force any specific transfer, so you can pick whichever term you'd like and feels works best. Language is malleable and getting people to change at all is going to be hard enough.
- This is the word LFJ uses to literally dox people and harass their employers.
@Aevann please hard filter "doxing" and "doxxing" to "sunshining" and "sunshinning" even if people have filters disabled
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These days "doxxing" your enemy is very popular online, but
s always said KF was evil and should be destroyed for it so they've come up with new terms like "unmasking" so it's ok when they do it. Josh is basically trying to adopt their terminology to undermine them lol
Can you explain? You can pretty much purchase addresses and telephone numbers of anyone you want if you have a name and birthday. Things like voting records and many court records are public or can be acquired for a fee. Some of the more difficult doxxings I've seen were the triangulation of public social media posts, accidental hints dropped by cows, and pure focused autism. There's the rare occasion someone who claims to know a cow drops into a thread but they usually don't dox, I can only think of Shadman getting doxxed that way. Even the MNPublicRecords guy is just some dude going to public court terminals in minnesota
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What I mean when I say that is that information can be public but obscure, and sometimes the connecting thread that lets people find that public info would be from private information
ie: connecting their online persona to their personal profile (which has circumstantial evidence of being the same person like timestamps lining up with activity) with a leaked DM that confirms last name
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So basically, "HOW DARE YOU CHECKS NOTES PUT TOGETHER INFORMATION PUBLICALLY AVAILABLE ONLINE!"
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You say this but then condemn me for sending Reddit teens instructions on how to purify agricultural hormones for DiYHRT
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"If it's okay for adults to watch ageplay scat porn then why can't I let kids watch it as well."
This is basically what you're saying.
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No I'm saying you can do good or bad things by "just collecting public information", so saying that's not sufficient to portray something as innocent.
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And I'm saying that your example of "collecting information" is only bad when you distribute that information to minors. If you want to let adults know how to make hormones, go for it.
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The audience makes a difference, like sending sunshining to a group of people that wants to harass the sunshined person?
If you're of the opinion that people can make their own decisions once provided with information, I'd agree (with the hormone purification instructions).
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Not the audience, but the age of the one you're sending information to makes the difference. You legally aren't allowed to show minors all the things that you are allowed to show adults, nor should you be. Minors generally have limited rights and liberties, so something that would apply to every other group doesn't necessarily apply to them.
I'm fine with limitless distribution of information as long as people receiving that information are consenting adults. However, I personally wouldn't allow people to just post someone's home address, landline phone number, or voting district if I owned the Kiwi Farms, as that kind of information is only ever used to harass people in 90% of the cases. Posting their full/dead name, state of residence, s*x offender entry, or any sort of document that might contain their address, as long as revealing that address is not the main intent of the post, would be 100% fine with me. But hey, since I don't own Kiwi Farms, I don't get to make that decision, and since I, in principle, agree with Null that nobody can, should, or will guarantee you internet anonymity, I'll just accept that a website with rules I don't fully agree with exists on the internet and that that website isn't doing anything inherently wrong.
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Yes
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I'd need to see a more concrete example of what you're getting at, like someone on KF doing what you're suggesting, because personally I'm not following.
For what it's worth, I've
doxedsunshined multiple people on KF myself and I haven't had to rely on any private information, at least as I understand the meaning of the word private. My main cowtools have been property tax lookup portals and required filings from the Federal Election Commission, plus statements made by the persons of interest themselves, to tie a name to an alias or to confirm an address.Jump in the discussion.
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