NEWS/OPINION — SCP Staff Dox Hundreds of Their Users Daily
“Rules for thee but not for me.” — Every horrible leader ever
Despite the cries to the contrary from their bully pulpit, SCP staff love doxing people. They quietly do it to everyone who comes into their IRC chat rooms.
What is doxing?
Per Wikipedia, doxing is “the act of publicly revealing previously private personal information about an individual or organization, usually through the Internet”. It is a notorious tactic of online bullies and is often done with malicious or retributive intent. Doxing is why best practices of the internet suggest that you use different names for different places, that you never share your real name, and you don’t identify yourself in pictures if you can help it. There’s a certain amount of photophobia that is wise and healthy here. This of course is harder for those with more notoriety, and who benefit monetarily from having their usernames constant between platforms for brand purposes. Or for people who don’t but can’t resist the flash of a camera.
The risk inherent in centralizing usernames has to be weighed against the potential upside; it makes a person more vulnerable to an observing actor gathering information about them. By volunteering a swath of information about themselves, across multiple sites but all in the same go-to handle, these people are power-leveling.
You don’t really want to give away your personal details if you can help it. That’s Internet safety and proper pseudonym handling 101. I know some of you reading feel as though I could have just as easily omitted this first section from the blog post, but you’d be surprised; as we will see.
SCP Authors Have Bad Habits of Over-Volunteering Personal Information
Enter SCP authors, a certain number of whom broadcast themselves over numerous platforms with the same or similar names to encourage their brand recognition. In addition to growing up hand-in-hand with a parasitic social media complex that dark-patterns them with dopamine into a false sense of privacy and security, these youths also desire, maybe need, extra-curricular engagement from their fans, to build a following all their own. Some get a little careless with this, a little limelight-drunk, and post sensitive details. There is at least one case where two such SCP authors have publicly posted their full name, where they live, and their face in the same paragraph, on the same page. Another SCP author posted their home address in one of their articles and bragged about it. Cell phone numbers are shared with large groups of people, like among staff. The normative and circumspect nature that should cause pause is for these authors callously tossed into the wind, their sails fully open and rudders aimed at the promised land ahead of e-fame, and for acceptance among strangers who would kill them for a larger share of the booty.
Hell, there used to be a thread on the SCP Wiki forum where you were encouraged to share a selfie, and many did, but it seems as though this may have been deleted since, perhaps out of a new-found wisdom; that, or the thread is buried somewhere irretrievably thanks to the now dead search function on WikiDot. Others do this unbidden and completely on their own, such as in their articles or on their author pages. The culture of cosplay on the site, where people exert time and effort to get people to look at them, adds to the potential self-incrimination. Major players on staff even made explicit their association and representation to the SCP Wiki in their Fet(ish)Life accounts, which openly advertise their highly personal kinks (click here for the extra-brave).
It might start seeming the case that SCP members have a tendency to make their very private details, details others would be mortified to share with the formless, rolling, black surface of the Internet, very available. Over-available. One might begin to wonder if they have unreasonable expectations in tow; fantastical spells somehow granted to protect this carelessness, and that they in response to the spells’ lack of effectiveness, might catastrophize the simple addition of two provided facts as malicious, “active doxxing”. But for now, let’s put this down and come back to it later.
These independent facts once brought together — malicious or not, by those who should know better or those downstream of them— mean that recognition of certain information is near-inevitable. This is not doxing. “Investigating” is what SCP staff correctly call it when they do this themselves, as pronounced triumphantly in numerous solemn Anti-Harassment Team probes. (Except for AdminBright’s.)
Take this KiwiFarms post as an example. This is the sort of information collation that people get banned for at SCP. It’s certainly intimidating for the person it is about, and I wouldn’t argue that it isn’t malicious in intent, but the information is all publicly available. It is not the result of a hack or an invasion into a privacy that wasn’t granted to the public by the individual themselves. The individual doesn’t have much other than himself to blame. Nevermind the severely questionable actions that made him draw the ire of random anons in the first place, or that forced SCP staff to awkwardly acknowledge, testifying in a fugitive way that they damn well know KF was right long before they were. (Click the original link to scroll down and see what this individual was banned for.) We can imagine that for something less horrible, but perhaps equally mortifying, there would be someone on the receiving end of this “doxx” that would want to contort it as much as possible, and discredit it by using whatever public-facing stage they had access to… or control of.
I am not suggesting that there is no doxing on KiwiFarms. There are at least two posts that I know of off the top of my head that blatantly dox SCP members. This is to say, information is presented that couldn’t have been obtained by publicly-available data. However, those who did this are not seemingly SCP or ex-SCP. The first was the OP of the thread from back in 2017, and God knows who they are. The second was a new user (last year) who hasn’t shown up since; not a regular someone who people there know, certainly not someone who identifies with the thread. The overwhelming majority of participants in the SCP KF thread don’t do anything close to resembling doxing. (“Nevermind that,” says SCP.)
For staff, these two posts are enough to auto-disqualify anyone else on the forum from having anything legitimate to say. It is all “doxing” to them, and they gladly paint it this way, though in crude strokes, to those of their group who are too sheltered and trembling to venture outside of the cave and see the facts for themselves.
Staff Ban Users for “Doxxing”
An overwhelming majority of what staff call “doxxing”, certainly most of the information available and actionable on KiwiFarms, results from SCP users being careless and posting their information publicly.
Take my recent ban as an example, listed second in this flight that staff surely tip toward pursed lips and toast like champagne flutes. I’m told DrBleep in particular was very proud of themself in at least one Discord channel for “investigating” and logging mine. A feather in their admin cap (which is still damp from being used as a rag for their sweat entering the crushing life of being an SCP Admin). Until only recently, it has escaped them, SCP staff on the whole really, that “ToS = scpcrnp”, despite this initially being pointed out by me over a year ago on the KF thread, and numerous times after, even by others explicitly in dedicated posts since (some of them getting the “you’re late” flair even); all on a thread that they watch closely.
Since you are on this blog reading this post, take a second to scroll up to the top left corner, click the “About” link, or use your memory. If you’re on desktop, it will be auto-hovering on the left side on all pages of the blog actually. You’ll see an author bio blurb there. I wrote that… neat little factoid. In there, I explicitly state that I am scpcrnp. I list my other pseudonyms too. I open the blog this way. It has always been there.
So, when I send links to members of SCP and staff and sign the message “ToS”, why would someone think that the information shouted at the top of the link provided was information that I was hoping to withhold? Does a person of average intelligence think that they figured something out that wasn’t intended to be known? All I can say is that, apparently, at SCP this is a normal way of thinking: to put identifying information out there and expect it to never gather in the presence of two or more brain cells. (If it does, then blame the brain cells.)
Let’s imagine that I was careless, that DrBleep got me good, and I instead brashly let on just a bit too much around the wrong people, who I underestimated the literacy and clicking aptitude of. Would I then have a right to claim that staff “doxed” me after they made the connections between my off-site usernames? Would the intent of the information I made available matter?
No. Only a moron would think that.
And staff agree. See a demonstration that they gracefully supply us:
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To belabor the point, see here where staff call such activity a “self-dox”:
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So I self-doxed and got banned. What did I get banned for? Nominally, harassment, although PM’ing people through their public-facing messaging addresses is not harassment, any more than sending your Senator a letter in the mail is, but let’s leave that way over there. Otherwise then, it was for the same thing staff performed in banning me and others: collecting self-volunteered information.
Instances of this sort “doxing” can only amount to self-doxing, in the way staff understand and describe it as when the situation pivots over the fulcrum of political and social agreeableness to the other side. And yet, staff infuse words like “alerted”, “investigated”, “harassment” into the charges leveled, but also phrases of remarkable staffspeak, which don’t really mean anything at all, such as “accusations of hatred”. They do this because they have to in order to make the glove fit.
That’s the point here, the O5 Command forum a sort of printing press or mouthpiece meant to pronounce for the church God’s commandments and judgments. They can’t just call it like it is, back up anything with any citations or references, because they know it isn’t what they say it is. The supply of actual doxing is so low, they have to manufacture instances of it. They have the convenience of not wanting to spread more information “to protect those involved”, but again, miss the point entirely in that these are not victims in need of protection, they are careless people who put their own information out there and are in need of an important life lesson regarding that.
As it turns out, and if anyone cared to investigate, very little of what staff decry as “doxxing” in their disciplinary/AH threads is doxing. And they know this. The lack of any detail on the part of staff for these supposed doxes is telling; it isn’t excluded for the reasons they would tell you; it’s because there was no doxing. (The situational irony and appropriateness that DrBleep’s profile picture is a sign that says “[citation needed]” is just 😙 👌, muuah, perfect.)
In staff’s own words, this rises to the level of “self-doxing” and information that “anyone paying attention could have figured out”; no more.
So when you Google search the supplied real name of an SCP author who volunteered that information alongside a picture of their face, and then unexpectedly a LinkedIn profile pops up with the image next to the name confirming that it isn’t merely someone who shares the name, how can the individual who searched it be malicious or “actively doxing”? How could the individual who willingly and with consent gave this information not be partially responsible? This is the open door with the possessions inside, the owner of the house waving you inside with some sweet tea and cookies to rob them. Is someone sharing this LinkedIn doxing? The buried truth is that it isn’t malicious or nefarious sleuthing. It isn’t doxing.
How about participating in a forum where others dox? Or simply sharing unfavorable information that those with the gavel don’t want out there? That is what I, Furret, bettermybutter, Harmony, zakari, and countless others were actually banned for. It’s the coy concession of a phrase in the staffspeak; “drawing attention to users”. Yup. You’re damn right. But is doxing infectious and transmissible by digital proximity? If someone on a forum meant for free speech doxes someone and I read it, or post a comment in reaction to is; does that make me culpable as well? If I justify with citations my reasons for disliking members of SCP and their staff, is that truly doxing or harassment if all of the information was made available to me and everyone else?
Again and not for the last time, SCP staff can do what they want to with their site. (It certainly isn’t the users’ site, after all.) If they want to label something as doxing and make it law, then there’s not much anyone can do about that. That’s well and good. Except that staff actually dox people — their own users — and don’t regard it as so egregious when they do it.
Staff Dox Their Own Users Constantly
We’ve covered some situations where calling people out for their problematic and laughable behavior is misnamed “doxing” by staff knowingly, deliberately, and in a hallowed practice of misinformation.
Well what about the harvesting of IP addresses without the knowledge or consent of the user? Is that doxing? An IP address is a unique identifier. Certainly previously private information that is not volunteered. It can reveal your general geographic location, as well as your ISP — who you get your internet from.
(See: https://whatismyipaddress.com/ if you want to see what information someone can detect from your IP address.)
Someone’s whereabouts certainly seems like private information. What if someone then acted on the stolen IP address? Shared it with others, including staff, and even contacted a user’s ISP in an attempt to get back at them?
Enter SCP staffer, doxer extraordinaire Kufat:
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Kufat came along and pressed the gas pedal down on a host of new shiny tools that SCP awarded themselves as newly-minted and self-crowned IRC Admins. This development in their authoritarian technological capabilities was called out on KiwiFarms the moment it happened, to the deaf and catatonic reception of all at SCP. In more instances than are pictured and referenced here, Kufat seems to send Zyn, an otherwise exemplary person especially for a staffer, the IP addresses so that the bans can be mirrored from chat on the main site. Is that all he does with them? All he could do with them? Numerous high-ranking officers have no questions or concerns with this, including the recently-nominated-but-stalled & would-be site Administrator ProcyonLotor…
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While doxing has never been so routine and openly-excused, it is not new to staff; nor has its application and variable egregiousness, which is based solely on whether or not you agree with the way they see things. Kufat didn’t herald doxing into the Overton window for staff’s petty ideals of vengeance; it has been there for a long time.
We’ve covered how brazenly public figures in the site, on staff and not, doxed children for trolling their chatroom. ProcyonLotor called not one kid’s parents, but two. He also called one of the kid’s schools in an attempt to get them in trouble, potentially wrecking their academic life. (No one at the school gave a shit, LOL.) He did this with information — the users’ IP addresses for example, which we have records of him asking IRC staff for— that was not previously public, that was not offered willfully albeit stupidly as in other examples here. This was 100% a dox. This dox was signed off on by Mann. We know this because ProcyonLotor has boasted about it numerous times. Djkaktus was also involved, as was AdminBright. They thought it was hilarious. They shared it among themselves around the digital campfires like that shitty brown-noser’s story about Eskobar burning his pork chops after the banlist hit its max.
Why aren’t these individuals banned for doxing? Why is Kufat allowed to continue to harvest uninformed users’ IP addresses and even share it or contact their ISPs, engorged like a tick with the blood-lust of a deranged zealot who in a fit of disfigured justice thinks that there are people on the internet who just need to be tracked down and tattled on Stasi-style, in hopes that they might be forever silenced and denied internet access altogether? Why isn’t this rightfully recognized as insanity? Why the double standard that goes unidentified by SCP staff and users alike? Why is there not a notice for the naïve IRC users that by entering the SCP chats, you are giving away your right to not be doxed and that you exempt staff from any wrongdoing to your personal character or privacy in doing so?
Surely it isn’t because staff understand that they, on the whole, are power-obese hypocrites.
Oh wait:
Someone who gives away their personal details without hesitation or obfuscation, and then gets those details shared, can be said to be partly or mostly responsible for the ensuing damage, in the same way that I would be if I advertised my possessions with my address and left my front door open while I was away. The thief would in theory still be subject to the law, but in practice no police officer is going to lose sleep over my carelessness & poor foresight. No one is going to take my cries of protest seriously, and will rightly tell me to keep that information to myself and lock my door. No one is going to call this an egregious breach of desired privacy. No one is going to think the thief was irrational or unreasonable for taking the things that were offered. (Can they really be called a thief in that situation?) If someone calls into work sick for a week and then posts pictures of themself at the beach living it up… sharing this information isn’t doxing. It’s an observation that someone enabled and gave permission for.
Once you make your private information public, it can no longer be said to be private. The re-sharing of previously private, now volunteered information is not doxing. It’s only doxing in so far as that someone doxes themselves.
SCP staff understand this. Kufat understands that his perverted sharing of user IP addresses to other staff and ISP providers is the literal definition of doxing: “the act of publicly revealing previously private personal information about an individual or organization, usually through the Internet” and in a malpositioned sense of retribution. Yet they still take the opportunity to ban individuals who have done much less worse in their whole permanent record than staff do on a daily basis. The above-imaged anti-harassment logs, and so many more like them regarding other supposed offenses, can be seen not as a justice-filled episode of CSI: SCP that staff want it to be, or the defining “Ladies & Gentlemen, we got him” moment of someone’s staff career, but as an attempt at character assassination for those who the staff feel are politically inconvenient and in need of being smeared. Staff take the opportunity to authorize the community’s awareness of an individual who otherwise they would want buried in obscurity forever, only through the abstract universality of the outlaw, the detail-free and type-cast generic malefactor, the antonym of their projected sensitivity.
They will take the unflattering collection of volunteered information of one of their own and call it “doxing”. They will take the collection of volunteered information of an individual who they do not like and call it a “gotcha”, barefaced patting of themselves on the back for their “investigating”. They will use it to reinforce their cult’s belief of them as shepherds protecting a flock; a testament to their power and omnipotence; the banned a bloody sacrifice to celebrate their piety. They define something as doxing simultaneously and only in their action of condemning it as such, and not in any critical thinking or factual data that should antecede it.
Staff seem to believe that a user of their IRC chats consents without understanding something. Haven’t we seen shades of this sort of corruption before? Doesn’t that sound familiar? The user unwittingly forfeits the right to geographical and ISP privacy by participating on a platform that staff do not cordon with basic morality, and that yes they do not own, but the power of which they have tailored specifically to their wants and desires (we’ve covered this extensively; the reason why staff will not leave IRC for Discord). At least notoriously invasive and abusive “free” services like Facebook and Google wine & dine the user prior with requisite Terms of Service agreements — purely symbolic and able to be modified at a whim after the legal binding as they all are. Staff on the other, more curt hand endorse that a user, unaware and kept that way, has no expectation of privacy after being warmly welcomed into their web.
And a spider’s web it is; the wasps go free while the flies are caught.
(Thanks to Furret for his work compiling Kufat’s public comments and actions… I mean, for his evil doxing. See Furret’s Medium blog. Furret had added the following clarifications to the doxing process and specifics:)
(This article has been sent to Kufat in a PM via WikiDot, a screenshot is included below. Any reply will be posted in full, pending his removal of consent.)
(Kufat don’t care:)
© Lack of Lepers, 2021
