https://jezebel.com/wikipedia-exposes-porn-performers-to-stalking-harassme-1839229067
Why? Anti-porn harassers and general Internet stalkery:
....Porn performers take stage names to protect themselves, from quote-quote “fans” and anti-porn zealots, whose purported moral oppositions to the industry can manifest into personal acts of aggression. For a performer, publication of a legal name can lead to anything from menacing phone calls to being unsafe at home. It can out performers to loved ones, put their family members at risk, and shut down job prospects outside of porn. It can mean having their children interviewed for four hours by CPS, as happened with the anonymous performer above.
Whether careless or knowing, Wikipedia and IMDb put performers at risk of abuse, harassment, stalking, and violence. They do so while hiding behind the shields of company policy, user generated content, and public information. That is to say: These sites dispassionately prize the integrity and consistency of their databases at the expense of the privacy and safety of human beings.
And Child Protective Services get involved in a form of "swatting": if the actress has a child, stalkers will call CPS claiming anything to get them to show up and yank the child away.
Last week, a porn performer had Child Protective Services show up unannounced at her front door after an anonymous caller falsely claimed she was throwing “swinger parties” in front of her children. The caller lacked the kind of intimate knowledge one would expect of someone who personally knew the performer, who uses a stage name. But they did have one crucial bit of information: her legal name.
The performer can’t know for sure who made the call, or why, but she guesses that it was someone who, as she put it, “disagreed with my line of work.” Similarly, she can’t know for sure where they got her legal name, allowing them to make the report, but she has a strong guess: Wikipedia. “They used that information to try to remove my children from my home,” she told me, speaking on condition of anonymity, out of fear that others might get the idea to make similar CPS calls.
The article brings up the case of porn director/actor Kayden Kross, whose real name was on Wikipedia for years until it suddenly vanished last month. You can still see her full name, name of her husband, and that she has one child - in the Google box when you use The Goog as a search engine.
Also the comments are charming:
pambeezly88
10/24/19 1:53pm
Many if not most people’s jobs are publicly available somewhere. Anybody who knows my name and location can pretty simply find out where I work and what my job title is. If your job is such that you don’t want people knowing who you are, perhaps you should be questioning your life choices.
(The "88" is a dead giveaway that something is wrong, because it's online code for "Heil Hitler". Pam Beesly was a character on the American version of The Office.)
Mariaespinosat to pambeezly88
10/24/19 2:05pm
bingo
(This person "mariaespinosat" shows up again in the thread - I thinks it's a male troll in female garb.)
Hiemoth
10/24/19 1:33pm
I’ve never truly understood the seeming hatred and loathing some have towards adult industry performers, especially the ones who just seek to destroy them like this.
I mean, yeah, I can imagine the weak explanation would be how doing this they discouraging people from entering the industry or making it clear it isn’t a valid choice, but none of that really works if you think about it even a little. It’s just really sad and destructive.
mariaespinosat to Hiemoth
10/24/19 2:05pm
If you choose to get fucked on camera, don’t expect to stay anonymous. Don’t be a whore.
("Bingo" indeed.)
And it wouldn't be a G/O Media site without technical complaints:
The Bobby Drake Cometh to Tracy Clark-Flory (author of the article)
10/24/19 1:48pm
The autoplay videos need to go. We all understand your new corporate dick-for-brains are trying to destroy the company, but this is the fastest and most efficient way to bleed readership.
bathsaltsbeckydeuxthequickening to The Bobby Drake Cometh
10/24/19 2:37pm
Telling them is useless.
It’s their tech-averse management, full of old guys who think it’s still 2002, who are doing this.
herethereandeverywhere to bathsaltsbeckydeuxthequickening
10/24/19 6:54pm
Getting hard to leave comments too.
Kerberos824 to The Bobby Drake Cometh
10/25/19 9:39am
I have seen similar comments on Jalopnik receive responses from the author, who asked people to send emails to the writers complaining about the autoplay videos. The two authors in the comments also hated it, and that they were compiling complaints about it to give the new directors. It’s worth a shot.
