Doxing is like any other tool: It can be used for good or ill.
The way we use it, it's oft a necessity evil. Take for example many of the Rat King affiliates. They make up new identities as easily as breathing and "deadnaming" them gives one the potential to analyze why they keep doing so (usually, to avoid the consequences of their actions). Several cows we cover have criminal records, and us digging into them is the only way to really figure out how deep it goes.
In the case of some cows, like Brianna Wu, doxing her identity as John Flynt especially exposed her as being what she is (essentially Chris with a budget and actual influence) and brought us additional content and even
its own chimp-out trying desperately not to call us out by name. Still other times, it can simply be karmic, like we saw when Jake "All GGers should be Doxed" Alley got a taste of his own medicine and now everyone knows he's a real-life underpants gnome.
Other times a strategic use of dox can result in an entire
community chimping out, reaching a boiling point of hilarity that truly exemplifies why the Farms does it in the first place, as was the case of the SA Troons, or perhaps more gloriously, what
@Dynastia did to RationalWiki.
Which kind of brings me to something I noticed, which is the dichotomy of
how dox are used.
I've noticed that almost never does the Farms actually
do anything with the information it dredges up regarding a lolcow beyond establishing "this person is X" and documenting it. Most of the biggest chimp-outs over it are entirely the byproduct of those exposed immediately going full sperglord in an effort to either deny or exploit being doxed online. You will never see the Farms swatting anyone or sending them pizzas or anything, and if there ever is someone on the Farms stupid enough to ween out and do so, rest assured, they'll be
Halal soon enough.
I bring this up because a lot of the cows we cover fucking
love doxing people, including Nyberg, Reed, Quinn, and roughly half the Rat King affiliates, who seem to constantly maintain this "one rule for me, another for thee" mentality when it comes to this shit. They'll cheerfully use any dox they acquire in attempts to silence or shut people down online, attempt to get them fired or in trouble with their employers, and in the case of CON, even
try to get a purple heart-winning soldier in trouble because Gamergate - hell,
Nora was doing this yesterday. There's a sort of malice behind it that is readily apparent.