Doxxing

Ijeoma Oluo’s article about Doxxing was very interesting because it is something that I have never thought twice about. If someone makes a completely inappropriate, offensive, or threatening post on social media I generally believe that they should take on full responsibility for their post because it is public and they presumably chose to post about it. In some cases I think making an example of someone is a very effective way of getting a message across but what if that person did not post it but it was under her name and she was harassed for it?

This got me thinking about online harassment and cyberbullying in general and how there is no real was to police the messages and threats that we get online. Online harassment has to be taken just as seriously as personal harassment but it is so much more difficult to police. If the harassment being dished out online was being said in person, would it still be ok? A message that says “I want to kill you” can be just as scary online as it would be in person yet it would never be taken as seriously by officials because there would be little to nothing that could be done about it, which is terrifying. How this could be felt with or policed, I don’t know but I do know that as social media becomes more and more a part of our lives we need to begin to solve these problems to keep people safe.