In December 2022, Elon Musk cited “doxxing” as the reason behind suspending a number of journalists’ Twitter accounts. Officials in Brussels at the time warned the Twitter owner that the company could face sanctions after booting a series of journalists covering the billionaire off its platform.
European Commissioner Vera Jourova said that the suspensions were “worrying” and that EU law protects media freedom.
“News about arbitrary suspension of journalists on Twitter is worrying,” Jourova said.
The commissioner, who is the European Commission’s vice-president for values and transparency, said : “EU’s Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights. This is reinforced under our #MediaFreedomAct.
“Elon Musk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon.”
But what exactly is doxxing, and what does it mean? This is everything you need to know.
What does doxxing mean?
Doxxing refers to the act of revealing someone’s private information publicly, usually via the internet. While accidental doxxing does happen, it’s usually a malicious act.
The official definition from Merriam-Webster says: “To publicly identify or publish private information about [someone] especially as a form of punishment or revenge.”
Where did the term come from?
The term appears to have originated from 1990s hacker culture, with the word “dox” used as an alternative way of spelling “docs”, which means documents. It was used in reference to the act of “dropping dox”, which involved finding out personal information or documents about someone and publishing it online.
According to an article from Wired in 2014, “dropping dox” was “an old school revenge tactic”. The article explains that at the time, there wasn’t much hackers could do to take action against an online rival, so “breaching an enemy’s anonymity was a powerful weapon, opening them up to harassment or even law enforcement action”.
Doxxing entered mainstream vocabulary around 2014, when Newsweek published a story in which it revealed the identity of the founder of Bitcoin. Writer Leah McGrath Goodman was able to find out his identity through public records, and released not just his name but his home address as well.
What are some real world examples of doxxing?
There have been lots of examples of doxxing and attempted doxxing occurring over the years, including:
- When former Gawker reporter Adrian Chen revealed the identity of Twitter user Violentacrez as Michael Brutsch in 2012
- The Gamergate harassment campaign saw women in the video game industry targeted in 2014, with many the victims of doxxing
- When, in 2016, an Italian journalist attempted to uncover the real identity of the novelist who writes under the name Elena Ferrante
- Earlier this year, Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz was accused of doxxing after she revealed the identity of the person running the Twitter account Libs of TikTok as Chaya Raichik
What did Elon Musk say about doxxing?
On 15 December, Twitter owner Elon Musk suspended a number of journalists from the social media platform who had written about the @elonjet account, including reporters working for The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and other publications.
The account, @elonjet, tracked Musk’s private jet in real time using data available in the public domain. It has been suspended, with Musk even threatening legal action against the operator of the account. This comes despite tweeting in November that his commitment to free speech extended “even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk”.
The move comes after Musk joined a live broadcast on Twitter Spaces, which included some of the reporters who were later suspended, and accused them of doxxing him.
He said: “As I’m sure everyone who’s been doxxed would agree, showing real time information about somebody’s location is inappropriate, and I think everyone on this call would not like that to be done to them.
“There is not going to be any distinction in the future between journalists - so called journalists - and regular people.”
While the journalists insisted that reporting on the movements of Musk’s jet wasn’t the same as posting something like his personal address, Musk repeated that for him, it’s still doxxing.
Musk tweeted: “Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not.”