Emily GVerified account

Let’s take a walk down Memory Lane, if Memory Lane turned into a minefield. Doxing became A Thing in the GamerGate era, where it was used as a way to harass and intimidate women. Back then, doxing was a specific behavior: exposure of documents with intent to harass.

The targets of doxing were already well-known; the thing wasn’t so much exposing the identity behind a username as it was publishing personal details of an already-known person.

And the element of intent was clear: it was targeted intimidation. And it was largely leveraged by the proto-alt right nerds (which is how GamerGate is properly remembered in 2018) against women and POC.

Flash forward a few years. ‘Doxing’ is a neologism and words evolve. It has come to mean any exposure of a person’s identity even if it doesn’t include deep personal details.

Doxing has also changed hands. It’s now being applied heavily by antifascist researchers to disrupt fascist organization. The goal has changed, too. It is no longer to intimidate or harass, but to add real-world cost to real-world actions.

This has become so effective that “doxing” of this sort is one of the few bannable offenses on Gab.

In just a few short years, “doxing” went from being the favorite weapon of internet Nazis to their most-hated vulnerability.

More importantly, the term has weakened so much that the behavior Gab prohibits does not even require an element of intent to harass or intimidate.

That just shows *how scared* the Nazis are of their own tactics. An extremely watered-down version of what they themselves used liberally has now become one of the Cardinal Sins when used against them.

The lesson here is that you can do only one of two things: take the high road or stop Nazis. The good news is that you can stop the Nazis pretty effectively by taking a slightly less high road.