Current Events > Whoopsies! Internet sleuths doxxed the wrong person

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/what-its-like-to-get-doxed-for-taking-a-bike-ride.html

But the Park Police had made an error. Correction, the incident occurred yesterday morning, 6/1/2020, they wrote in a follow up tweet. As with most such clarifications, it had only a fraction of the reach: a mere 2,000 shares.

We must demand that clarifications be given as much importance as the original story. Particularly if we accused someone that then turns out to be innocent.
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You mean angry mobs are stupid and act without thinking? Shocker.

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To his surprise, the app that he used to record his regular rides from Bethesda into Georgetown via the Capital Crescent Trail shared that information publicly, not just with his network of friends and followers

It's disgusting how some apps default to this and so an oversight at the creation of the app or whatever can just broadcast your activity to everyone without them knowing. That's why I'm not on social media, especially Facebook.
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We did it, Reddit
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WaterLink posted...

an oversight at the creation

Obtaining users' information and making it publicly available was not an "oversight." I can certainly say it was 100% intentional from the start.

Every single app will use every loophole or mechanism to secure your data and sell it to advertisers or facebook. That's how they make all this cool shit for "free"

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Ouch, this is painful to learn. The privacy breached here is egregious. All I can do is close my eyes and shake my head in shame. I hope for the best outcome for all involved.

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there are likely still people out there not aware of the correction and still think he is the guy. it always bugs me that corrections are always hidden away. they make the initial accusation a major headline. and then admitting it was wrong is always some tiny little blurb in some out of the way part of the paper or websight or whatever. or if on tv they will talk for hours about the accusation and then just quickly spend like 1 minute on the correction

I hate people who do this, theres too much circlejerkin on the net

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As for the woman who shared his home address: She deleted it and posted an apology, writing that in all of her eagerness to see justice served, she was swept up in the mob that so gleefully shared misinformation, depriving someone of their own right to justice. Her correction was shared by fewer than a dozen people.

At least she acknowledges how she got swept up in mob mentality. Though that won't do much good with such few shares. Mobs have no problem swarming on a target but once they must hold themselves accountable for wrongdoing, they all scatter and disappear.

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PatrickMahomes posted...

WaterLink posted...

an oversight at the creation

Obtaining users' information and making it publicly available was not an "oversight." I can certainly say it was 100% intentional from the start.

Every single app will use every loophole or mechanism to secure your data and sell it to advertisers or facebook. That's how they make all this cool shit for "free"

I mean an oversight on his part. Most likely when he created the app, during the initial setup part there's usually options to share stuff only with friends or to not share it at all. But when you set up an app a lot of people just want to use the features and skip the setup part altogether and use the default settings.

It is an oversight on his part to not adjust the settings but it is also disgusting for companies and apps to take advantage of this and use public settings as the default.
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WaterLink posted...

I mean an oversight on his part. Most likely when he created the app, during the initial setup part there's usually options to share stuff only with friends or to not share it at all. But when you set up an app a lot of people just want to use the features and skip the setup part altogether and use the default settings.

It is an oversight on his part to not adjust the settings but it is also disgusting for companies and apps to take advantage of this and use public settings as the default.

For sure. And in my defense I didn't read the story so if it was user error then yeah fair next, but the data abuse shit still holds true either way in the big picture.

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https://twitter.com/skaijackson/status/1269053463280771073

People are saying the first pic is faked - that the dude's ex downloaded his pic off FB & put the racist text on w/ SnapChat to incriminate him. Can't find any receipts, but the plausibility of that in & of itself is concerning. The increasing normalization of doxxing on the left sets a scary precedent, and I'm equally worried about what the inevitable right-wing pushback is going to be; not saying the right isn't already guilty of such tactics, but they've diminished considerably as the more vocal online demographic since the election, and I can't shake the feeling that this tension's gonna spark a full-fledged second wave way worse than what we saw in 2016.
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Such is the reality of mob "justice."
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Zanzenburger posted...

Mobs have no problem swarming on a target but once they must hold themselves accountable for wrongdoing, they all scatter and disappear.

she wasnt a cop...

Null_Mime posted...

You mean angry mobs are stupid and act without thinking? Shocker.

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Real journalists actually have to do research and verify information before publishing a story, but Twitter "reporters" can just post whatever bullshit they want without any consequences. It's fucking insane.

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Reminds me of the boston bombings
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