It helps if you use a word if you use the common definition of that word.

If you want to expand the definition of the word doxxing then that's fine but you'll have to have that conversation all by yourself.

I'll just use this one:

"Doxing" is a neologism. It originates from a spelling alteration of the abbreviation "docs" (for "documents") and refers to "compiling and releasing a dossier of personal information on someone".Essentially, doxing is revealing and publicizing the records of an individual, which were previously private or difficult to obtain. "

From:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing

So this isn't doxing, since the information isn't private and it isn't difficult to obtain.

I’ll just use this one, from the first paragraph of the very same page you cited:

> Doxing or doxxing (originally spelled in 1337 as d0xing) is the act of publicly providing personally identifiable information about an individual or organization, usually via the internet. Historically, the term has been used interchangeably to refer to both the aggregration of this information from public source or record databases and social media websites (like Facebook), as well as the publication of previously private information obtained through criminal or otherwise fraudulent means such as hacking and social engineering.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing

So this is doxxing, and you dishonestly cherry-picked an incomplete definition. In case any confusion remains, here’s the Oxford Languages’ definition:

> search for and publish private or identifying information about (a particular individual) on the internet, typically with malicious intent.

There is nothing 'personally identifiable' about an airplane, it's a plane, not a person.

Posting your home address which you've kept out of the public eye is doxing, posting the whereabouts of any aircraft that broadcasts that information to all receivers is not. That's why you can find this information all over the internet, the only place where you currently can't find Musk's jet is on Twitter. And that's before we get into his free-speech arguments which apparently were a bit inconsistent.

Or would you like to accuse the FAA of doxing as well?

Yeah I don't understand this at all. If I told you right now that I'm arriving at LAX in 1 hour you still have no chance of finding me, and it's transient, I'll be somewhere else private very soon.

I don't see how it's any different from a public figure saying they'll be attending any public event.

How far out of the public eye does your address have to be? I have filed a few patents and I run a company, and both of those put my address in prominently searchable public records. If you dig a little deeper, the deed to my house is a public record accessible through a 15-year-old website, and going even further, you can do a credit report on me and find all of my past addresses.

I know people wish this weren't the case, but your address isn't exactly private information. Anyone can find it easily for anyone else.

That's true. But if you were to for instance publish that address with a call to action or if you were to compile a list of addresses of politicians with a call to action you'd quickly end up on the wrong side of the law. That is doxing. Merely looking up someone's address used to be a matter of looking in the phone book. And people that did not want to be in the phone book had unlisted numbers.

So the bar for doxing is definitely a low one, but in this particular case it isn't met. I can see why Musk is irritated that that account exists, even more so because it didn't go away at the first request by someone as powerful as him, and that makes it personal. See the whole saga with that diver for a typical response. But that doesn't mean that the person manning that account is doing something illegal and that is the bar which Elon Musk himself set not all that long ago, and which is what makes this news.

If he had been a bit smarter about this he would have just said: "I'm irritated by you, this is my site and you're gone". That would be that. But now there are all these logical pretzels why this is illegal and all that other stuff that people - and Musk - do on twitter is not because 'free speech'. The two are incompatible, and he knows it.

By the way, doxing isn't illegal. It would get you kicked off Twitter, sure, but it's not illegal in the US.

The question remains: is the FAA doxxing by searching out and publishing this information on the internet? Why? Why not?

The FAA? The aircraft announces itself over the radio.

Sure, it always helps if everyone can agree what the subject matter is, but at its core the issue isn't whether behavior X fits someone's definition of doxxing, it's whether behavior X is illegal. Something can be illegal but not doxxing, or doxxing but not illegal.

And in the case of Musk, secondary issues arise, such as the fact that in the US lawsuits can be commenced for almost any reason, and how Musk's tremendous wealth, power, and social influence allows him to hold others hostage to his whims and malleable ethical positions.

It isn't illegal as far as I can see and it isn't doxxing as far as I understand the term. It isn't classy either, and I wouldn't do it but whoever operates those accounts should be free to do so under the rules that Elon Musk set himself a few weeks ago.

The main criterium for Twitter rules changes appears to be whether or not Elon is personally inconvenienced. Which is fine by me but then he should drop the 'free speech' act and stop pretending that he understands the degree to which the former team managed to eke out the closest workable compromise on uniting free speech whilst still having a legal and functional website. That coin does not seem to have dropped yet.

Principles such as absolute free speech only mean something if you uphold them even if you are personally inconvenienced.

I agree, except to add that I unfortunately don't think Musk's principles are very different from most people's, in that it seems that most people only care about their own free speech and are completely fine with the speech of their ideological opponents being repressed.

Very true, but most people don’t brand themselves as “free speech absolutists” and make a big public spectacle about how their position is morally superior to all others.