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Home » Media outing private citizens who have the wrong politics

Media outing private citizens who have the wrong politics

The New Neo Posted on by

And by “the wrong politics” I mean anti-Democrat and pro-Trump.

This sort of thing is sickening. It used to even be considered what was quaintly known as “un-American”:

The guy posted a silly video (the “drunk Pelosi” video) to make a politician look drunk. The Daily Beast thought the appropriate response was to contact Facebook to find out who was responsible, dig into his background and tell the world about him being on probation for a domestic battery dispute and that there is a warrant for his arrest in California? That’s not journalism, and it sure as hell is not newsworthy. It’s exposing someone because you don’t like that he made fun of someone on your side. This was a hit piece, plain and simple.

But a great deal of journalism is composed of hit pieces these days; it both reflects and feeds the social media mentality with its outrage mobs. And it’s hardly new, or hardly just a reflection of social media’s dominance. Remember Joe the Plumber, who had the temerity to ask a difficult question of Obama during the 2008 campaign?

At any rate, it’s not so much what the Daily Beast did as what Facebook is said to have done:

The Daily Beast website reported that Facebook assisted in its effort to dox a conservative man who manages Facebook pages focused on political and sports news and commentary.

The June 1 report said that Facebook provided information on the man’s private account activity, adding to concerns about the social media giant’s battered privacy record.

The guy who was doxxed, by the way, says he’s planning to sue the reporter and the Daily Beast, and also claims he didn’t make the video.

What’s true? What’s false? seems to be a major theme so far today.

Comments

Media outing private citizens who have the wrong politics — 26 Comments

  1. I have to wonder how similar all of this to what happened in Germany in the 1930s. As a kid, I couldn’t understand how decent people would stand there quietly and let bad things happen. But now that I am an adult, whose main priority in life is taking care of my family, I sit quietly and do nothing but post on anonymous blogs. I don’t claim any great skills of prescience, but I did foresee the social justice outrage mobs as a risk to ordinary people early on. They are really no different than brown shirts, demanding to destroy lives and jobs, and otherwise glorifying in the hurting of the “right” people (figuratively and literally). They are absolutely blind as to what they are really have become.

    I’m not sure what the laws are on doxxing, but before it’s too late, I really think that this practice needs to be stomped hard. Doxxing private people – especially by companies – should come with terrifying fines and jail time. The threat of doxxing “people we don’t agree with” literally curtails one of the most fundamental rights there is.

  2. Waitaminute!
    Didn’t SNL just run several skits depicting Judge Jeanine Pirro as an angry drunk?
    WTF?

  3. This is an extremely dangerous trend, and it needs to be stopped cold.

  4. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

    –Saul Alinsky

    Saul Alinsky is the Machiavelli of our time.

  5. He’s a warlock and deserves to be deplatformed and dunked. If he is no longer viable, then we will know beyond a reasonable doubt that he is, in fact, a duck… life is but a parody that progresses and diverges with an irregular consensus.

  6. Saw this other post today, and then noticed it’s been linked on another Neo thread already.
    Very relevant here.
    Doxxing is the cyber equivalent of SWATTING, which is illegal, and which has gotten people killed. All the social media have “rules” against it, but are slow to enforce those against people guilty, in their opinion, of wrongthink.
    That they are now abetting it is, simply put, evil; it is a disproportionate response.

    Kind of reminds me of that video maker jailed for “inciting the Benghazi riot” because Hillary needed a scapegoat.

    https://pjmedia.com/trending/why-this-jewish-conservative-student-was-forced-to-go-into-hiding/

    KyndyllG on June 4, 2019 at 1:54 pm said:
    I have to wonder how similar all of this to what happened in Germany in the 1930s.
    * * *
    In the past, I also could not understand the descent of Germans into the hell of their own making; now, I do.
    There is a demonic irony in that the people doing the doxxing, intimidating, and violence claim that THEY are the ones fighting “the Nazis” — Satan’s only type of humor is very, very dark.

  7. The Left doesn’t just leave the iron-y on; they leave it plugged in and super-charged 24/7:
    https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/02/daily-beast-editor-hunts-outs-black-working-class-american-silly-pelosi-video/

    There is no way that politics didn’t have anything to do with The Daily Beast article. Indeed, since the Pelosi video, people have recalled a similarly slowed-down video of Trump to make him appear drunk. I don’t remember any deep dives to expose the scoundrel behind that video! Maybe Poulsen will be on that next. Maybe he can dox a Bernie Bro!

    Poulsen got lucky after his release from jail. It appears he seamlessly moved into a career in journalism and held several different jobs before becoming a contributing editor at The Daily Beast. Good for him. It’s always great when a federal felony conviction does not pose an obstacle to good employment. As a criminal defense attorney, I can tell you how hard it sometimes is for my clients to find a decent job after being released from jail. Not everyone is as lucky as Poulsen.

    So why did The Daily Beast even think it was newsworthy to identify the guy behind the viral Pelosi video?

  8. More from The Federalist:
    “Journalists should not be targeting private citizens. And they will never admit it, but they are targeting citizens whose politics they don’t agree with.

    Journalists need to leave private citizens alone and get back to being journalists, ”

    Yeah – they should stick to doxing CIA assets in Russia (NYT), while protecting their own anonymous sources with machinations only a little short of providing FBI safe houses and a witness protection program.

  9. David French
    ?
    @DavidAFrench
    I’m seeing social media accounts claiming to be the person the Daily Beast outed, and he’s strongly contesting the story. If the Daily Beast exposed him _and_ got the story wrong, _and_ Facebook helped expose their customer, then we’re looking at next-level misconduct.
    * * *
    Maybe he could get some legal pointers from the lawyer for the Covington Catholic students.

  10. It’s not just conservatives and Republicans who are the victims of media outrage.

    He wasn’t doxxed, exactly, but he was subjected to the chastisement of the Committee of Public Safety nonetheless.

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/black-man-is-called-the-n-word-and-social-justice-idiots-make-him-apologize-to-trans-people

    A black man, perhaps with slavery in his ancestry and who is also gay, gets called the N-word, acquiring him widespread attention and putting him at what would be the peak of the grievance hierarchy. But the scale of oppression is fickle. Positive attention can give way almost instantly to public shame. Brooks did what was required of him, genuflecting to another aggrieved identity.

    It never ends. When you think you’ve heard it all, another layer of oppression is laid atop the other, another block of grievance is stacked on top of the next.

    I hope Brooks enjoyed his brief status as a social justice hero. Now it’s on to the next.

  11. “I’m seeing social media accounts claiming to be the person the Daily Beast outed, and he’s strongly contesting the story. If the Daily Beast exposed him _and_ got the story wrong, _and_ Facebook helped expose their customer, then we’re looking at next-level misconduct.”

    I don’t care if they got the story right. Unless he was making threats of physical violence or exhorting others to do so, he can say any damn thing he wants, especially about public figures. That’s the price of being a public figure; the slander/libel bar is so high that it’s well established you can literally say pretty much anything about a public figure. Not so for private citizens. This needs to be stomped out.

  12. This is not doxxing, but it is a close cousin in the attempt to drive conservatives out of the public square — and definitely falls into the Nazi methodology.

    https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2019/06/01/salesforce.com-latest-company-join-ranks-corporate-activists

    Salesforce.com is the world’s largest seller of customer relationship management platforms. Although it’s not a household name like Google or Apple, it’s an enormous company with a market capitalization of $120 billion and over 40,000 employees.

    One of their largest, long time customers, Camping World (CW), happens to be one of America’s largest gun retailers.

    For many years, this wasn’t a problem for Salesforce. But it appears now that times have changed. And the woke corporation just doesn’t feel comfortable doing business with a retailer that sells guns. Especially when one of their most profitable products happens to be the much-maligned AR-15 rifle.

    In fact, over the last couple of months, Salesforce began applying pressure to their gun-selling customers. “Stop selling military-style rifles, or stop using our software.” This latest directive puts their customers in a tough situation. “Camping World, for example, spends more than $1 million a year on Salesforce’s e-commerce software, according to one analyst estimate. Switching to another provider now could cost the company double that to migrate data, reconfigure systems and retrain employees.”

    Mark Oliva, public affairs director of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms trade group takes issue with Salesforce’s new “acceptable-use” policy.

    Once again, the irony of pressuring banks, air terminals, and software companies to quit doing business with people guilty of wrongthink and “hate crimes” escapes the people prosecuting florists and bakers who don’t want to do certain types of business with their own preferred victim-groups.

    Except the scale of things is kind of skewed regarding the people they support and the ones they attack, which is why it is akin to doxxing private individuals.

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/san-antonio-sued-over-chick-fil-a-ban

  14. I haven’t seen the video. I can’t imagine what would compel FB to willingly dox a private citizen simply for the fact he supposedly made a video that mocked Pelosi. Have vindictive children who appear to be grown adults, experienced and skilled enough to be employed by one of the most powerful and innovative social media platforms, taken over FB? That was a rhetorical question. See: Google and Twitter.

  16. Remember what the highly ethical, even-handed (sarc) news media did to Joe the Plumber?

  17. I have no connection to ‘social media’ beyond occasional posts at this wonderful blog. I don’t understand why anyone would connect to FB, twatter, ect.

  18. M J R on June 4, 2019 at 5:23 pm said:
    As Daniel Greenfield noted just yesterday in FrontPageMag.com
    (and I quote) . . .

    “Google ‘Drunk Trump Video’ and you’ll find countless results. None of their uploaders have been doxxed by media outlets.”
    * * *
    One of Greenfield’s commenters said this:

    RaymondJelli • 2 days ago
    The reality of doxxing is why it’s important to engage trolls just to learn how those ticks tick. Once the media has thrown your name out there you better use your new found celebrity to get in their faces and find people willing to stand by you. When they punch down they have everything to lose.

    If they take away your living show up at their place of work and ask them personally why they did it. With cameras rolling. Show pictures of where they live or pay a visit . And if you need money for that ask on kickstarter, websites. Make them wish they hadn’t done it. It’ll be all you have left. Remember they are just trash. Treat ’em like it. Let the world know.

    This seems to me to play well in the current French vs Ahmari sandbox.

    https://amgreatness.com/2019/06/04/sohrab-ahmari-is-right-politics-is-war/
    Sohrab Ahmari Is Right: Politics Is War
    By Matthew Boose| June 4th, 2019

    There are multiple levels to the David French-Sohrab Ahmari debate. One could discuss whether, as Ahmari implies, it is wise and just to seek control of the administrative state to restore moral order. Or one could discuss whether classical liberalism and Christianity are really so opposed as Ahmari suggests.

    A simple take away from the debate is this distinction: Ahmari recognizes that politics is war. David French does not and, as Ahmari observes, the consequences of this blinkered understanding have put conservatism in a losing position for a long time.

    see also:
    https://amgreatness.com/2019/06/03/what-david-french-gets-wrong-about-david-french/
    What David French Gets Wrong About David French
    By Julie Kelly| June 3rd, 2019

  19. Sometimes you get edit; sometimes you don’t.

    IMO, actually, I would prefer to be able to agree with David French in his preference for civility and real tolerance in working with people who have different ideologies and political policy agendas.

    The problem, as Ahmari observed, is that we are not working with people who reciprocate that sentiment.

  21. Thanks for the link to Julie Kelly’s article. French’s entire project merits disrespect.

  23. It’s just humans doing what humans are proud of. Germans and Russians once did the same thing as the power of the State.

    Now Americans get to enjoy feeling what it was like being under a German or Russian State power.

  24. AesopFan on June 4, 2019 at 5:18 pm said:
    This is not doxxing, but it is a close cousin in the attempt to drive conservatives out of the public square — and definitely falls into the Nazi methodology.

    So when is California or New York gonna drive these conservatives out of the State with an extermination order?

  25. ymarsakar:
    “So when is California or New York gonna drive these conservatives out of the State with an extermination order?”

    They are working at it overtly and covertly, but mostly piecemeal.
    Of course, the original one didn’t have the intended effect for Missouri, did it?
    BTW, they finally gave it up.
    https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1976/09/news-of-the-church/extermination-order-rescinded?lang=eng

    “a reading of the Journal of Discourses”
    It’s a large tome, and some of the transcripted talks are quite interesting.
    However, as you no doubt know, they are of historical value only, and are not accepted as doctrinal. History is always enlightening, though.

  26. Doxxing private citizens…

    Moreover, hounding and tormenting the innocent in the pursuit what they call “virtue”.

    Proclaiming destruction throughout the land.

    Alas, the utter EVIL committed by the Democratic Party may well be beyond redemption:
    https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/05/30/scorched_earth_lives_upturned_muellers_targets_speak_out.html

    That its members appear to lack all awareness and sense of shame is not something that will be quickly forgotten.

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