The original version of the piece, which is highly negative about the person, contained a name and an address said by some to be a personal address, in addition to an employer’s name and address.
The link was removed sometime between two and three hours after publication.
“That’s just false. That’s just patently false. We absolutely did not link to any personal information,” Lorenz said during a podcast interview with CNN.
Libs of TikTok said these statements were lies.
“They included a link with personal information which they later removed because they knew what they were doing was abhorrent,” the account said on Twitter.
Critics also said the statements weren’t true.
“It would be better to admit it and explain or apologize,” said Mary Katharine Ham, a CNN commentator.
The Post and Lorenz both acknowledged that the original version of the story did link to a page about the woman who they say runs the account, but only after being pressed on the matter.
“It was a link to her previous professional address, and we ultimately deemed it unnecessary,” a Post spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.
Lorenz told CNN said she didn’t know where exactly the link went to but claimed it definitely didn’t contain personal information.
“I think maybe [it went] to an open government database,” she said. “Like an old—I don’t know. I just know I went through that whole story myself, and there was nothing personal.”
Libs of TikTok didn’t respond to requests for comment, including what personal information was included in the link. Lawyers representing the account owner, whose identity hasn’t been confirmed, declined to comment.
Alex Stamos, a professor at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, said the story constituted doxxing, a word that means to publish private or identifying information on the internet, typically with malicious intent.
“The account is horrible and drives a lot of harassment, so naming was probably appropriate, but not the breadcrumb trail (via RE license) to this person’s home address,” he wrote on Twitter.
Lorenz has disputed allegations that the article constitutes doxxing, pointing to interviews the alleged account holder gave with news outlets in which her name wasn’t revealed.
Libs of TikTok primarily shares videos that people, mainly teachers, post to TikTok celebrating how they teach pupils about sexuality, including homosexuality and transgenderism, or talk about the subjects.
One professor, for instance, was fired after the account shared a video of him saying that sexual contact with a 1-year-old might not be wrong. Another man was let go after expressing support for children deciding their own sexual orientation and saying, “If your parents don’t love and accept you for who you are this Christmas, [expletive] them, I’m your parents now.”
Lorenz said she looked into the identity of the person who runs the account because the woman was “targeting LGBTQ folks” and running an “LGBTQ hate account.”
LGBTQ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer.
The reporter also said foreign actors could have been behind the account.
Lorenz cited research by Travis Brown, a developer formerly employed by Twitter who is now working with a group called the Prototype Fund, as helping her discover the person’s identity. The fund is financially supported by the German government, according to its website.
Brown himself cited a self-described member of Antifa, a far-left, anarcho-communist network, for helping him learn the accountholder’s identity.
