Slashdot Mirror
Korea's Online Aggression a Taste of the Future?
DerGeist writes "Imagine your life ruined by an organized mob that convicts with scant, unreliable evidence. Fueled only by hearsay and rumors, an invisible horde of your fellow citizens begins bombarding your snailbox, email, phone, work, school and family with threats, insults and general harassment. You are forced to drop out of school and quit your job as a result of constant attacks. You are shunned and ridiculed in public as anywhere you go, you are instantly recognized. Although it may seem to be just a second-rate Hollywood nightmare scenario reminiscent of "The Net," this sort of "organized mob" justice is being dealt out freely in South Korea where net usage is booming. So freely, in fact, that almost 1 in 10 of 13-65 year-olds has felt its sting. Could this trend hit the U.S.? Will policing net behavior eventually become necessary?"
The U.S. citizen has lost all notion of public shame. What in South Korea gets you ostracized, in the U.S. get you on "Entertainment Tonight".
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Could this trend hit the U.S.?
No, because every smart admin trys to block all IPs from Korea!
Oh do you mean could rumors and shit started by people in the US hit hard here? They already do. People are always into drama, especially online. They are hiding behind their computers and believe they are anonymous.
There's really nothing better than receiving threatening e-mails at work and home as well as subscriptions to gay magazines, threats of violence against your home, family, and dog just because you locked a thread on a forum.
It really makes the Internet fun.
If they are issuing "real" threats or abusing services, they should face the consequences of those abuses. It shouldn't require any new Internet Police(tm) or anything like that, the e--mailer/ISP/local rules for harassment, etc, or abuse of service should do it.
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....but there is going to be hell to pay once their server farm of Vic-20s sends all those viruses through Fidonet at 300 baud in order to bring America's SychroNET and C-NET C64 BBS user base to its knees.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Who needs the net to ruin lives when you have the traditional media? Ask the parents of JonBenet Ramsey or Richard Jewel about having your life ruined by false accusations. Do you think CNN will ever have to pay for either spectacle?
an ill wind that blows no good
It's just a larger scope than it used to be.
Small towns used to be this way (and still are) where every small little thing get talked about and blown out of proportion.
In the town I grew up in merely having a young males car parked outside a young females house while he goes and visits another young male across the street will spawn all kinds of rumors and anger.
Television has been doing this for quite a while, just take the recent developments in the Jon Benet Ramsey case. I can't even remember at this point why everyone threw so much anger at the parents.
Until people stop hating at first site this won't go away.
The nannies, values police,and the do-gooders will do anything to get the cops policing our wild-west network into some surburbaned picket-fenced wasteland. This excuse seems as useful as all the "for the children" excuses.
I'm trying to visualize "1 in 10 of 13-65 year-olds" being "instantly recognized" and "shunned and ridiculed in public" anywhere they go.
While an amusing image, I'm having a hard time believing it.
Harassment is harassment, whether it takes place in person or over the net. Stalking is stalking, online or not. The laws we have are already adequate to cover these scenarios. The only problem, of course, is identification, but no law will help solve that.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Reminds me oddly of this:
http://www.gangstalking.ca/
Also, watch the video:
http://www.eharassment.ca/videos.htm
but there is going to be hell to pay once their server farm of Vic-20s sends all those viruses through Fidonet at 300 baud in order to bring America's SychroNET and C-NET C64 BBS user base to its knees.
Nope, they've seen the latest Norwegian research and are moving up to ip-packet-carrying birds. The good news is that you can disable that network with a 20-gauge shotgun, and in a pinch, those pigeons are actually edible. Pheasants (which originate in Asia) are better eating, but don't home as well, and they're bigger targets. Though they might work well in a Token-Ringneck network topography.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
It just goes to show you that that the internet is going to be responsable for the complete downfall of society. we need good christian values. If you boiled one offender in oil a week in public this sort of thing wouldn't get out of control. Heck if parents beat their kids regularly said kids might not go out and hurt other people
I often have trouble remembering which way is out of bed in the morning.
The U.S. citizen has lost all notion of public shame. What in South Korea gets you ostracized, in the U.S. get you on "Entertainment Tonight".
I can think of several examples where spammers' personal info was posted to Slashdot, and the (alleged) spammer was subjected to harassment in virtually all of the ways described in the article.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Remember?
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http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/21/00552
You're using her as bait, Master!
It already DOES happen. The guy who uploads naked pics of his ex, the guy who took a mugshot of his ex-buddie and posted it to somethingaweful, and not to forget the Star Wars Kid.
And let's not even get close to afternoon TV and other forms of "entertainment" that resemble a freak show more than anything.
Could it be worse? Would "online mobbing" be worse? Hardly. Online only means that more people learn about it, but 99.9999% of those don't care at all. They don't know you, wouldn't even recognize you if they met you on the street. What matters is your peers, and it is fairly easy to tell them about whatever you did supposedly do or say, with or without the 'net.
If you really want to mob someone to the point where he loses friends and family, you don't need the net. You only need gullible people, and they are running free in our streets.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm an American with a Korean wife. I speak Korean, and my wife, kids and I watch Korean TV shows together. We especially like the game shows. The game shows mostly have popular stars as participants.
Certain participants are so popular, that if a not-so-popular star insults a popular one (even during a game called "Dangyon Haji", or "Of Course", where the OBJECT of the game is to insult the other person until they quit), that not-so-popular one will get bombarded with hate e-mail, hate-posts, and sometimes they even get bombarded by physical objects! Their popularity drops dramatically. Some stars have been known to lose intentionally to avoid earning the wrath and ire of the "fans."
I don't think this has anything to do with the fact that they "teched-up" rapidly before online etiquette was formed. This has more to do with emotion-driven Korean culture. The word "fan" comes from "fanatic," and that is what some of the "fans" really are!
For instance, you can get on places like MySpace or USENET, pose as your victim, and start saying crazy things that will eventually find its way to future employers.
Or you can pose as other people saying nasty things about that person and make it sound like a large number of people hate this person.
Using anonymous proxies (or remailers on USENET) will make you increasingly resistant to being discovered and punished; but even if you are, that person will still have to clear their name with employers and such that don't know the "rest" of the story (such as, it's all a lie and perhaps their attacker is now in jail). The thing is, employers would rather not hire people mired in that kind of drama; so even if God tells them the truth, that only bolsters their decision not to hire the victim of such online malevolence.
This has all the elements it needs to be the next wave of domestic terrorism in America: anyone can do it, and the damage can be overwhelming. Plus, law enforcement is typically too slow and unconcerned with dealing with people who do this, and when this wave of terrorism hits its stride, civil courts will be crushed by all the thousands - or millions - of court cases, as every Tom Dick and Harry in the world takes advantage of what will be seen as the most powerful weapon of mass defamation in history.
I say "in history" because it's super cheap (free), super easy, super effective and super devastating, if the harasser knows how to do it right in the correct forums where information will propagate far and wide.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Last year my uncle has been the subject of his ex-lover's efforts to destroy his reputation on TV, Philippine newspapers & local blogosphere in a bid to get their child back, win in the court of popular opinion & for money. His ex-lover used her media & political connection to go on live TV to accuse my uncle of being a murderer, land grabber, gangster, etc (basically making him out as a Hannibal Lector if he was a lawyer) and told people to look him up on the Internet. Seeming she couldnt mention his name due to legal reasons she had to mention a Philippine Army General who harassed our family 15 years ago as a key word so people would know who he was.
You see my uncle is a lawyer who is a giant question mark in the mainstream media & the general public and it doesnt help his name shows up in a lot of court decisions posted on our government's Supreme Court website. For the curious by-stander who just happened to have a casual interest you would automically assume my uncle was truelly that "evil" seeming he was mentioned in so many contraversial Supreme Court cases. I do not blame people making such brash assumptions seeming court documents are long, wordy & use very legalistic terms that would cause any non-lawyer to scratch his head and make wild guesses. It is far easier to trust a female celebrity guesting on the local equivalent of the Oprah who bashes my uncle as the devil than to make the effort to get the whole unvarnished truth through court documents.
Because of these lengthy legal papers people automatically think all the things the ex-lover said was true, that he was a real monster.
If only people took the time to read the legal papers they'd see that the ex-lover was manipulating them. It pisses me off that the ex-lover had to dredge up our family feud & shame that legally ended with a Philippine Supreme Court decision back in 1991. I will probably never forgive her for that.
I can relate to the Korean fellow whose reputation was tarnished because of very malicious rumors & half truths spread by those who make assumptions.
I know a lot of people dont like lawyers but please, no taste-less jokes that lawyers deserve this kind of flack. I also know by not including links my post doesnt pack the punch that would really make the discussion & I apologize.
Mildred, the church gossip, and self-appointed monitor of the church's morals, kept sticking her nose into other people's business. Several members did not approve of her extra-curricular activities, but feared her enough to maintain their silence.
She made a mistake, however, when she accused George, a new member, of being an alcoholic after she saw his old pickup parked in front of the town's only bar one afternoon.
She emphatically told George and several others that everyone seeing it there would know what he was doing. George, a man of few words, stared at her for a moment and just turned and walked away. He didn't explain, defend, or deny. He said nothing.
Later that evening, George quietly parked his pickup in front of Mildred's house ... and left it there all night.
I couldn't help thinking that Poe (others too, probably) already thought of this 150 years ago, specifically in Some Words With a Mummy , written in 1850.
Ever hear of defamation or libel?
I assume that we're ignoring the fact that it's usually nigh-impossible to find the people who started the whole rumor mill going or that it's impossible to sue EVERYBODY involved in mob harrassment or that you may have actually done what you're accused of like the woman who was infamously harrassed for letting her dog poop in a subway car and refused to clean it up, etc.?
Well, the main problem is that suing people can take years and is basically closing the barn door after the horses have run free. It in no way stops the harrassment, which will die out on its own long before then and leave smoldering distrust and disdain in people's minds towards you. Suing is far less effective than preventing it from happening in the first place. All suing is is vengeance, and vengeance is always a thing for after the damage has been done.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
A female friend of mine was emailed by some guy on her myspace account. She told him she wasn't interested in dating, and he proceeded to email everyone on her "friends list" that she had an STD, this list included friends, family, coworkers, ex-boyfriends etc... So she's been trying to do 'damage control' for 3 weeks now at this falacy.
Even though it was probably some 'script kiddie', this kind of stuff being emailed to nontechies can be mortifying.
Stick your head in the sand and say it doesn't exist and the truth goes away, eh?
I can make that scenario I described happen in 5 days flat. I've actually done all those things to online bullies before. There's a guy in Illinois who can't get a job because he threatened to sodomize a USENET poster's kid and I posed as him reposting his remark at local web boards and even had someone post his remarks on paper on a few telephone poles.
Yeah, he got an attorney, and yeah, I offered to fly out and answer to libel and stalking charges. But then he would have to admit to threatening to sodomize an 8 year old girl living no more than 25 miles away from him in the discovery of evidence phase.
That case flew like a lead brick.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
The gist was: the vast majority of people are children, and children like to exaggerate and tell lies.
I don't think adults exaggerate and lie less than children do, but I do think that they're much more sophisticated and subtle at the insidious craft. A great deal of nuance goes into grown-up lies.
There is no way of knowing the truth.
On the contrary! Everyone knows what Truth is. Bad guys are liars and and propagandists, and good guys are truth-speakers and educators. Those last two statements are valid for all value systems that my limited mind can recognize or imagine.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
I can say that internet usuage is bred into just about everyone over there. When on the subways/trains nearly everyone is either playing a game, texting, or e-mailing over their uber-phone. When they are not doing that they are taking pictures of themselves to send to their friends and/or use for some sort of web use. I love Korea and am planning upon returning soon, but I can understand why the medium is the internet over there for these type of situations. Heck, you could get 100mbs down and 20mbs up VDSL connection for approximately 35/month.
Music, my drug; dance, my ecstasy.
We have people like that. For half a decade Internet sites and journals have been raided by vigilantes. Years ago Something Awful would promote an offensively stupid website and encourages users to 'visit' its guestbook, invariably flooding the guestbook with spam and Goatse, or crashing the site with their own Slashdot Effect. Unprotected LiveJournals were obliterated under the mass flood of Tubgirl. It was both terrifying and awesome, in its Internet-limited no-one-gives-a-rip scale.
/b/tards have stalked accidental celebrities with nigh-disturbing fervor. Cracky Chan and the like. They've moved up to destroying deviantArt accounts, recently having suggested one user change her password to something a /b/tard suggested... social engineering for dummies.
/b/ is the next level up. All forced anonymous. They've brought moronic commercial services like Habbo Hotel, Furcadia and Second Life to a halt, overloading servers and disrupting legitimate users. The
Now, when tens of thousands of these people are concentrated in one small country, they seem to reach mass and their actions spill into the real world. They also become shielded from internal conscience. When the legions of American vigilantes want blood they tend to restrain themselves from crossing into real world criminal behavior, and a sane few have shown they can temper the mania of the masses. In America, cliques of vigilantes are seperated and mingle little. Single system administrators like SA's Lowtax, YTMND's Max, or 4chan's Moot can kill their isolated mobs. South Korea seems to present a more united front - hell, even their search portals name the most popular target/victim of the day. Their culture isn't strikingly different from American online culture. Their fanatic individuals are far more common, however, and their offensive actions are coordinated across servers, while voices of reason are fractured and lost.
My problem with spontaneous human combustion is that never seems to happen to the "right" people.
Or may be they get cranky soon!!
I have heard chinese students saying "Koreans get cranky soon after eating dog!" Anyway, whatever be the reason, I also have same experience with Koreans! They utter things without thinking!
MK Ultra made him confess falsely to this deed.
First conspiracy post!!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Whoever wrote this article has obviously never used Usenet before. If they had, they'd know that was the original home of net vigilantism. If you got someone angry with you there, getting cancel requests sent out after your original post was a *best* case scenario. Worse things involved massive cases of libel, people publicising contact information, (such as phone numbers/snailmail addresses) people issuing death threats, and in the very worst scenarios, people attempting to actually carry said death threats out.
It's not so true now...but years ago, a person had to be very careful what they said online. You'd never know what unhinged lunatic might see your words, take them personally, and then decide to do something about them.