I've had some time to dig into this a little further.

For me, I'll need to divide this into two buckets. I say that because until Wednesday, I didn't realize that the user MuckRaker96 (and later Fat Bib Fortuna) was both the user I received a complaint about last fall and the user that two or three posters have been trying to dox for the last couple of years based on a criminal act in 2010.

The idea that I never made that connection might hit you as unbelievable or disappointing or maybe even a relief - I'm not sure. But here's the deal: we're not in the TexAgs office assembling dossiers on you guys. We're not running background checks or cross checking your AgTag with criminal records nor are we building up a database of dirt to search through. We're doing pretty much none of that actually. It's pretty difficult to keep track of users beyond forum activity which is what we are set up for.

Let's get into the first bucket: There's been talk on this thread and others about MuckRaker96 using information he has obtained through organizing off-board contests (and promoting them here) to dox users. I've not seen much evidence of that nor has anyone contacted me directly about being doxxed (having their real identity posted online in an effort to harass).

However, I DID receive a complaint this time last year from a user about MuckRaker96. That complaint expressed concern that after a negative interaction on the forums, this user believed MuckRaker might have registered his email address on numerous left-leaning political email lists. By the end of the day however, this user emailed me back stating that he was wrong and that a friend had fessed up to the prank -- case closed.

Well maybe not, because 6 months later this user emailed me again saying that he was "wrong about being wrong" and his friend had a couple of weeks earlier recanted his previous confession. The user also included a link to a previous conviction years earlier of the individual behind the username MuckRaker96 for online harassment. This user believed once again that the harassment they experienced in the fall was likely from MuckRaker96 misusing their email address.

Let me be clear: this is the only complaint I'm aware of that accuses MuckRaker96 of misusing email addresses collected via off-board contests. If I'm wrong about this, please speak up. It being the only complaint, the reality that it's pretty much impossible for us to verify (or falsify) these types of claims, and the strangeness with how this complaint unfolded all combined to give us some doubt and we elected not to pursue action against the user. Again, if there are other claims of misuse of information by MuckRaker, I'm not aware of them.

Now regarding the other bucket about us removing attempts by users to dox MuckRaker96 as it relates to a criminal history, that is true. Several posters here HAVE been moderated over the past couple of years by various moderators for attempting to dox the user for a 2010 incident involving the solicitation of nude photos from minors through the impersonation of two high school athletes. One of those athletes was former A&M football player Trent Hunter.

We moderated these posts because we have a zero tolerance policy with regard to doxing. That is to say, we will moderate any attempt by users to "out" the real identity of any and all users here. The protection of your identities and your personal identifiable info is supremely important as individuals register for this service with the expectation that their real identities will remain private.

The posters we moderated were attempting to dox MuckRaker96 not because this individual was using our platform to further criminal acts or groom victims. They were attempting to dox this individual because they believed the poster to be a bad person. Again, that belief was not for the user's actions here (to the best of my knowledge), but for what the doxxing users discovered about the individual's past actions elsewhere.

Look, do we have an affinity for sex offenders? No, NO - we absolutely do not. But we DO have an affinity for the privacy of our users and we will not go down the road where on individual posters decide which people on here are bad enough to be doxxed. I would hope that most of you would find that reassuring in this day and age.

If MuckRaker96 (aka Fat Bib Fortuna), or any other poster for that matter, is using this platform to pursue crime or harass users (either on-board or off-board) I absolutely want to know about it and will investigate further.

Thanks,

Brandon