Doxxing

Doxxing refers to the deliberate public disclosure of someone's private or personal information (typically their location or address) without their consent. Doxxing is typically maliciously, to harass, humiliate, or intimidate the victim. The release of location information is itself a violation because it can then lead to various severe outcomes, including credible threats of violence, stalking, and swatting. It is a thorny problem for trust and safety teams because it tends to be easily structured to avoid their protections:

• Differentiating between legitimate and malicious uses of location sharing is challenging, given that location sharing and discovery is integral to many apps. Even human review in this context is of limited use, since a wide review of context and prior interactions and surrounding context may be necessary to ascertain the true intent of sharing of a location.
• Doxxing is often done cross-platform, posting a threat to a user in one space, and publishing their location data in another. Even posts that link to external sources of location data (like maps) can be a significant confounding variable in building automations to prevent doxxing.
  
• Lastly, the real-time nature of doxxing-related harm necessitates quick response mechanisms. 

The nature of the abuse does point toward some mechanisms for redress. Doxxing is often carried out by a small subset of users who engage in the activity repeatedly, so sharply escalating penalties on users who violate this policy can be an effective mitigation strategy. Additionally, platforms may benefit from systems that allow users to request immediate content takedown, with expedited review processes to mitigate harm as quickly as possible.