Facebook Should Tighten Doxing Rules, Says Oversight Board

Meta’s Supreme Court, the Oversight Board, has ruled that Facebook needs to tighten up its rules surrounding doxing, especially concerning the sharing of private residential data.

Doxing (or doxxing) is the practice of publicly revealing previously private personal information about an individual or organisation, such as a home address or telephone number. It is often associated with harassment or stalking.

Meta’s Oversight Board was setup in October 2020, and is designed to be the ultimate authority over content decisions on the social networking giant.

Doxing rules

It can overrule Meta’s management over content decisions, and last December it urged Meta once again to be more open about its content moderation decisions.

Now the Oversight Board has published its first ever policy advisory opinion, where it reviews Meta’s policies on a particular topic and makes recommendations for they should be changed.

Its first ever policy advisory opinion is on the sharing of private residential information.

It comes after Meta last year had requested a policy advisory opinion from the Board on the sharing of private residential addresses and images, and the contexts in which this information may be published on Facebook and Instagram.

Meta apparently considers this to be a difficult question, as while access to such information can be relevant to journalism and civic activism, “exposing this information without consent can create a risk to residents’ safety and infringe on an individual’s privacy.”

In its policy advisory opinion, the Oversight Board recommended that Meta remove the exception to the Privacy Violations Community Standard that allows the sharing of private residential information when it is considered “publicly available.”

This would help Meta better protect people’s private residential information, it said.

Among its other recommendations, the Oversight Board proposes that Meta create a communications channel for victims of doxing, give users more control over how they consent to sharing their private residential information, and provide data showing the amount of content removed following privacy-related government requests.

Essentially the Oversight Board has ruled that Meta should not allow users to share people’s private residential information on its platforms, even when the information is publicly available.

Meta’s previous internal guidance to content reviewers said information published by at least five news outlets or available through various public records did not count as private, the board said.

The board said Meta should remove this exemption and should ensure exceptions for newsworthy content should be consistently applied.

It also said Meta should allow external images of private residences when the property is the focus of the news story, though not for organising protests against the resident.

Real world impact

Of course, many of the victims of doxing are celebrities, who are often at the centre of the debate over right to privacy, public interest, or even civic activism.

A recent high-profile case in the UK saw Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling accusing trans activists of doxing her by posting a photo of her home on Twitter.

She accused three trans activists of deliberately taking photos outside her house, carefully positioning themselves to make her address visible in a way that could prompt more threats.

Unfortunately for Rowling, police in Scotland took no action against them, saying no criminal offense had been committed.

There is also a debate for example about publicly identifying trolls for example, who hide behind anonymous accounts to conduct at times horrific trolling activities against individuals and well known celebrities.

Broadcaster and environmental and animal rights campaigner Chris Packham, for example at Christmas called for anonymous trolls to be publicly identified and for more robust laws.

In October Packham’s home suffered an arson attack, when two masked men set a fire to the gates of his home.