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Taylor Swift provoked fans to go after her rivals and now they’re being doxxed

Taylor Swift provoked fans to go after her rivals and now they’re being doxxed

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“Please let Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun know how you feel about this,” she wrote

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Taylor Swift attends the 2019 MTV Video Music Video Awards...
Photo by Efren Landaos/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Taylor Swift wants the rights to her own music — and she may have just crossed an ethical line to get it. On Thursday afternoon, Swift asked her gigantic army of fans to get in touch with music industry talent manager Scooter Braun and former label boss Scott Borchetta to “let them know how you feel” about their attempts to keep her from performing her old hits on TV or using them in an upcoming Netflix documentary.

That request, of course, would require Taylor’s fans to know how to get in touch. So fans promptly began doxxing the pair, publishing what appear to be Braun and Borchetta’s private contact information — including phone numbers and a physical home address — on Twitter.

Over a dozen people appear to be doxxing Braun and Borchetta on Twitter so far, but there will probably be more — the hashtag #IStandWithTaylor is currently trending worldwide, and Swift just published the call-to-action in her Instagram stories as well. The Verge has not confirmed the phone numbers and address shared by fans are legit, but we will not be publishing them in case they are.

While Swift’s note might seem reasonable at first glance, doxxing is an extremely serious matter because there’s no telling what a “passionate” anonymous fanbase might do with those phone numbers and addresses once they’ve been exposed, and there’s no putting them back in the bottle once they’re on the internet. It’s not just potential harassment over the phone; people have died after being swatted, where a person calls in a fake gun or bomb threat to get a SWAT team to bust into someone’s home.

Both Twitter and Instagram have policies prohibiting doxxing, and we contacted both to ask whether they will leave Swift’s post on the internet and what they’ll do about her controversial call-to-action. Instagram tells The Verge that it is adding posts containing the personal information of Braun and Borchetta to a database that allows the company to automatically delete other attempts to post that information. Instagram also tells us that Taylor’s post does not violate its policies. A Twitter spokesperson said “posting a person’s private information without their express permission is a direct violation of the Twitter rules.”

On Friday morning, Big Machine Label Group responded to Swift on its website, saying “Taylor made a unilateral decision last night to enlist her fanbase in a calculated manner that greatly affects the safety of our employees and their families.”

It may seem unfair that that one of the world’s biggest pop stars doesn’t have the rights to the master recordings of her own music — which is what this fight is all about — and can’t use it as she likes. It’s extra frustrating if the stories Swift tells about how that music wound up in Braun’s hands are true. Last we heard, Swift thought she had another option in re-recording her own original songs herself, something she says she’s still “looking forward to” in the images she tweeted — though she claims Braun and Borchetta are holding her American Music Awards performance and Netflix documentary hostage unless she gives up the idea of re-recording.

“At no point did we say Taylor could not perform on the AMAs or block her Netflix special,” Big Machine said in its response. “In fact, we do not have the right to keep her from performing live anywhere.” However, that’s a bit of a dodge; Swift never said Big Machine was outright trying to cancel her appearance, and the company’s statement avoids the subject of whether it’s barring Swift from performing her older material.

But now, she’s effectively asking fans to go to war for her, in a way she can’t control, and that’s dangerous.

Update, November 15th, 9:13 AM ET: Added a statement from Big Machine Label Group and information from a Twitter spokesperson.