Did Jim Sterling Dox People In His Latest Video?

Smoketrail

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In today's Jimquisition, "A Tale Of Casinos And SEO Juice", Jim Sterling covered the issue of casinos pushing undisclosed sponsored content for their online gambling services. Sponsored content like this is an issue worth talking about, of course.

But what caught my interest was that in several places Jim mentioned the specific names of the companies involved, fine o far, but also gives the full names of the employees that he'd been talking to and shows screenshots of the emails from them including their uncensored email addresses.

This strikes me as being completely unnecessary for his content and crossing some pretty significant ethical boundaries.

For what I hope are obvious reasons I'm not comfortable linking the video.
 

GrumbleGrump

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Depends in whether they agreed to their names and adresses being disclosed. If not, yeah, it's kind of a bad move on Jim's part, although I wouldn't consider it a terrible slight.
 

Erttheking

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Only if the employees were stupid enough to put their real names and use personal e-mail addresses for casino like spam e-mail...somehow I doubt that was actually the case.
 

Smoketrail

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erttheking said:
Only if the employees were stupid enough to put their real names and use personal e-mail addresses for casino like spam e-mail...somehow I doubt that was actually the case.
Why not they're contacting what is in effect a small media company on behalf of an advertising company, hired to represent said online casinos. It's not like spam in the general sense. I don't know of any company that uses assumed identities in business dealings. And even if it were a possibility its still not acceptable.
 

Silentpony_v1legacy

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But wait, isn't doxing where you release personal information that isn't freely available online? Jim gave names. Names that these people put on their website as their names, associated with their website.

Like if I go to a restaurant, my waitress introduces herself as Cindy, and I come back here and say Cindy works at a restaurant, have I doxed her?
You didn't know that information before, sure, but its still public information. I mean for fucks sake, Cindy even has a nametag! This isn't rocket science people!
 

Erttheking

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Smoketrail said:
erttheking said:
Only if the employees were stupid enough to put their real names and use personal e-mail addresses for casino like spam e-mail...somehow I doubt that was actually the case.
Why not they're contacting what is in effect a small media company on behalf of an advertising company, hired to represent said online casinos. It's not like spam in the general sense. I don't know of any company that uses assumed identities in business dealings. And even if it were a possibility its still not acceptable.
Considering how sleazy this company is, because online gambling is generally rather sleazy, I get the feeling that the people who are associated with it wouldn't want to readily slap their names on it. There's also the fact that doxxing is usually considered to be digging up really personal information and posting it online for the case of smearing people. I'll admit Jim probably shouldn't have done that, because it might not have been in the best taste, but I consider it to be so low on the serious totem and not really that malicious that I have a hard time getting mad over it. Also I looked through the video and saw that one of the e-mails he showed were linked to the businesses he was talking about, so one of them wasn't a personal e-mail, it was a business e-mail.

Also what SilentPony said.
 

DoPo

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Silentpony said:
Jim gave names. Names that these people put on their website as their names, associated with their website.
Neither of the two names shown in the episodes appear on the the website they work for.
 
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I don't think so. But I was surprised to see the Cultured Vultures as part of the video, given that I write/wrote for that site.

I had no idea any of this existed there.
 

Smoketrail

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Xsjadoblayde said:
Names of public business figures aren't doxxing, dude. Chill ya pods.
I'm not sure I'd class employees of an advertising firm public figures.

I'd also point out that he revealed their email addresses in a video calling them shady and unprincipled. Given how much flack other have gotten for "setting their fans on people" in disputes, especially in both sides of the gamergate thing, I would have thought this would be a bigger deal.

I would have thought Jim'd be a bit more careful given the amount of space he used to give to talking about internet shit flinging contests.
 

fix-the-spade

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Smoketrail said:
But what caught my interest was that in several places Jim mentioned the specific names of the companies involved, fine o far, but also gives the full names of the employees that he'd been talking to and shows screenshots of the emails from them including their uncensored email addresses.
I would bet money that the names listed in the emails are not real people. The kinds of companies that put out these mass produced spam deals usually fabricate a few names to plug into the bot sending out the emails.

Even if they are real people, representatives of any company getting their name put out in public is not a big deal. They are representing their employer in an official capacity, if they don't want their name out there it says more about their employer than anything else. Fishing for sponsorship deals is hardly a sensitive job either.
 

The Rogue Wolf

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They're commercial Email addresses for a company, being given out (unsolicited, it seems) for the purpose of business. This doesn't fall under the same class as private Email addresses.
 

RJ 17

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I've got to say, lately Jim's been on a roll with his videos. One could say that he's been pounding it.....pounding it.....pounding it....pounding it.....pounding it......pounding it.....

:^)
 

Avnger

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Smoketrail said:
Xsjadoblayde said:
Names of public business figures aren't doxxing, dude. Chill ya pods.
I'm not sure I'd class employees of an advertising firm public figures.
They are spokespeople for their companies. This is no different than if someone were to "reveal" the link to message The Escapist's Community Manager nOe or that his name is, apparently, Jeff Mills. Both of those facts are publicly available due to his role as a point of contact for The Escapist.

Smoketrail said:
I'd also point out that he revealed their email addresses in a video calling them shady and unprincipled.
This has absolutely nothing to do with whether something is doxxing or not. Also, he called their actions/jobs shady and unprincipled. There's a very fine line between the two.

Smoketrail said:
Given how much flack other have gotten for "setting their fans on people" in disputes, especially in both sides of the gamergate thing, I would have thought this would be a bigger deal.
??????

Smoketrail said:
I would have thought Jim'd be a bit more careful given the amount of space he used to give to talking about internet shit flinging contests.
Except this isn't "internet shit flinging" nor is it a "contest" any more than if it had been written as an Escapist news story or reported on by CNN.
 

MrBoBo

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Jim Sterling lives and dies on controversy, even his reviews(oh so honestly) are attempts at courting it.