It's not about it being public information. There's tons of shit that's "public information," and available to get, but there are steps that need to be taken to get it. Some more steps than others. Kind of like a soft "paywall" of sorts (minus the pay) that makes it so the internet isn't just inundated with data constantly. And sometimes, get this, you can even be denied requests for information that's "publicly available" if, for example, t's deemed that you shouldn't have it for whatever reason. But I digress...
Just because something is "publicly available information" doesn't mean it just gets broadcasted all over the internet to anyone with a Facebook account that the algorithm knows is a hateful conservative.
It's a joke that people are pretending that this is about free speech or something, and not about making it easier to constantly harass and threaten.
It's about it being targeted at one specific person, and it's about the people who are doing the targeting (which differentiates it from the Musk situation). No, not the college student who made the app, before you go there to try to undercut this argument. I'm not talking about him.
I'm talking about the people who would use a tool, that they found in their far right/conservative/republican/fascist echo chamber bubble to threaten rape and death to another human being and their loved ones.
And if it is, hpw is she going to stop them from dping the neglegable research themselves
This is kind of the crux of it, isn't it? These people are being whipped into a frenzy by whatever hate-media they consume, and without a Fox News or Tucker Carlson or whomever else to steer that frenzy toward Taylor Swift and this app, then that info would have remained "public knowledge" behind a simple search as it probably should be.
The college kid who made the app is just a tool (witting or not).