Yes, it's very new. I'll PM you more details about the specific drama I'm referring to. I'm not afraid of going slightly off-topic, but the event in question is a very volatile, culture-war topic and discussion of it are often banned to avoid flamewars.
So for the sake of this public discussion I'll say that social media, namely Twitter and Facebook, are to blame for the current panic about doxing. Media corporations, big business, etc. have pushed "social media" as some sort of essential for everyone. It's very irresponsible because those sites absolutely suck for privacy and having conversations, and nearly everything else. I think this onslaught of newbs, who don't understand how to separate their internet life from their real life, have been duped by big money into throwing caution to the wind and put it all out there. The only winner is marketers and state security organizations. And now, as the consequences of these poorly-informed decisions are manifesting themselves at an hitherto-now unseen scale (mostly egos being fractured, but some physical harm), all these over-exposed people are is getting super sensitive to "cyber-bullying" and "doxing".
You and I have been cruising the information superhighway long enough to know what a healthy community looks like. One where you know your moderators and admins personally, and the rules are enforced and agreed upon in conversations with the posters, etc. TrekBBS is a great example. Also notice how, as the older netizen generation, most people here use a pseudonym, or take some small measure to distance their online persona from the real deal. And we have some form of containment, so if I hate Voyager I can just avoid the Voyager subforum, for instance. We have defences, and recourse to problems on the internet.
In contrast, Twitter and Facebook throw everyone together, and yet dumb newbs still think they are having private, or personal conversations and can expect privacy, or a right to not be contradicted or argued with ("harrassed"). Reddit has a "CEO" and a board of directors, which makes no sense to me. Why would I, as a poster, need my web forum to be a corporation? What do I get out of it? And Twitter pays invisible, unaccountable moderators people to delete posts with no rhyme or reason. People get harrassed, but their politics determine whether they "deserve" it or not. It's disgusting.
For all these reasons, common sense has gone out the window, and I get the impression all the social media newbs feel very exposed and paranoid and are making crazy demands to social media, police, governments, the UN etc. to save them from scary trolls and doxers. This is a culture-shift in the internet, I think, away from personal responsibility to safeguard one's own privacy toward demanding protection while making oneself extremely vulnerable.
I hadn't even heard the word "dox" before a year-and-a-half. But like the words "blog" and "meme", the word and what it describes isn't going anywhere. Now that the whole fucking world is online, and completely defenceless and ignorant about how to protect themselves, it is prudent to try to be seen as very careful with other's private information. As of late everyone is out to find someone to blame for making them feel vulnerable, don't let it be you!
