Real-Time Doxxing and the Littlest Musk – by Abigail Shrier

Does anyone think our democracy could handle the result of that sort of open season on our public figures? We are unimaginably fortunate that Nancy Pelosi and Bret Kavanaugh weren t murdered in recent attempts by unhinged men to invade their homes. As Americans, we are already deeply, painfully divided. Something resembling Civil War could easily erupt in this country over the assassination of a Justice or even a figure like Musk.

And no, this has nothing to do with free speech, that much misdescribed and battered freedom, best appreciated after it is already lost. The Twitter Files have already shown that ordinary Americans cannot possibly keep pace with technologists ability to quash and narrow public dialogue. But there is no free speech interest in the real-time trailing of anyone s precise location.

When the crazies come for your children, you experience something captured by the phrase she saw red.

Maybe Elon Musk has ushered in a regime that will ultimately be as bad as the one before. Maybe it will be less bad but still subject to whims of the powerful. But for the first time, we know where to take our grievances: to one man, at last, an identifiable repository of responsibility. No more the hidden committee passing secret judgment. One man, explaining his decision to a critical public. And maybe that man will prove a grave disappointment. But this new policy doesn t yet indicate that.

Because when the crazies come for your children, you experience something captured by the phrase she saw red. And you aren t a rational thinker any longer, nor really a person. You re just a mammal, red in tooth and claw. And you will do anything anything to protect your young.

via abigailshrier.substack.com

I’m pretty much with Musk on this one. He probably needs to lay down some rules and set up some kind of process to implement them. But in the meantime, “no doxing of persons’ real time location” seems like a good rule. You can’t blame the guy for going a little crazy after someone went after his kid.