It's neither of those. Stalking refers to persistent, unwanted, one-sided interactions with a person such as following, surveilling, calling, or sending messages or gifts. Investigating a person's past or identity doesn't involve any interaction with the physical person. Harassment is persistent attempts to interact with someone after having been asked to stop. Again, an investigation doesn't require any form of interaction.
> Harassment is persistent attempts to interact with someone
No, harassment also includes persistent attempts to cause someone grief, whether or not they involve direct interactions with that person.
From Wikipedia:
> Harassment covers a wide range of behaviors of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behavior that demeans, humiliates, and intimidates a person.
Doxing in the loose sense could be harassment in certain circumstances, such as if you broadcast a person's home address to an audience with the intent to cause that audience to use that address, even if the address was already out there. In that case, the problem is not the release of information, but the intent you're communicating with the release. It would be the same if you told that audience "you know guys? It's not very difficult to find jdoe's home address if you google his name. I'm not saying anything, I'm just saying." Merely de-pseudonymizing a screen name may or may not be harassment. Divulging that jdoe's real name is John Doe would not have the same implications as if his name was, say, Keanu Reeves.
Because the two are distinct, one can't simply replace "doxing" with "harassment".
Generally speaking, every case I've seen of people using the term "doxing" tends to be for the case that specifically is harassment; it has the connotation of using the information, precisely because if you aren't intending to use it there's no good reason for you to have it.
Language evolves. Connotation tends to become definition. Not always the only definition, but connotation becomes the "especially" or the "definition 2", and can become the primary definition over time.
That's not what I mean. If we agree that harassment is wrong and that doxing is not harassment (because not all doxing is harassment), then it's incorrect to say that doxing is wrong. For example, the article from the blog, even if we agree that it is doxing, isn't harassment. The person being discussed is presented in a positive light:
>I for one will be buying Denis/Masha/whoever a well deserved cup of coffee.
Using one term when what is meant is actually the other serves nothing but to sow confusion.
You can harass someone while discussing them in a positive light.
And i don't just mean under colloquial definition, i mean under the legal definition of harrasment. In fact its fairly common for unwanted "positive" attention to be harrasment - e.g. unwanted sexual advances mostly fit that description.
You are generalizing an irrelevant point. What I was getting at is that unlike the usual usage of doxing, it was not a call to go bother that person. I didn't think I needed to make that point this explicitly within the context of this subthread.
Which is irrelavent as that is not a requirement for it to be harrasment.
I get that a call to action is a common feature of doxing and it wasn't present here, but its not a particularly common feature of harrasment outside of the context of doxing and nothing in the definition of harrasment requires it.
That's just another way of saying "words don't have meanings". Yes, it evolves, but to preserve the original meanings, that evolution should be slowed down as much as possible to avoid “black is white” effects.
