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Online Vigilantes, Or "Crowdsourced Justice"
destinyland writes "The Chinese credit the 'human flesh search engine' for successfully locating 'the kitten killer of Hangzhou' from clues in her online video. But in February, the same force identified a teenage cat-abuser in Oklahoma — within 24 hours of his video's appearance on YouTube. 'Netizens are the new Jack Bauer,' argues one science writer, and with three billion potential detectives, 'attempts to hide will only add thrill to the chase.' But China's vigilantes ultimately turned their attention to China's Internet Propaganda Office, bypassing censorship of a director's personal information using
social networks, including Twitter. The author suggests there's a new principle emerging in the online world: 'The Internet does not forget, does not forgive and cannot be stopped. Ever.'"
it is not a good thing,
I offer this:
Look at history, and political science and take a hard look at why republics functioned beter then pure democracy. The Internet runs the same risk.
Take heed and good luck, crowd sourcing has a hidden downside people are forgetting.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
The internet-justice connection is also about making information easily accessible to the public. And sometimes the public know what the police don't.
Ted Kaczynsky was identified by his brother somewhat due to his reversed (though also correct) use of the phrase 'you can't eat your cake and have it too.' I imagine many aspects of a crime could be identified through that kind of esoteric data, if only the right people saw it.
Many people will SAY anything. I've seen people on /. advocate the murder of people who hold views of copyright different from their own. Extreme positions get amplified on the internet because extreme people can easily interact with other like-minded extreme people. That's all fine and dandy, so long as it's just idiots saying stupid stuff. Freedom of speech, whatever.
The problem for me is that there is a very small minority of people who can be triggered to act by the incitement of others. These people will reach out and HURT people with little or no factual support. Unless stopped, people like this exert an evil influence all out of proportion to their otherwise insignificant place in society. Nazis did that kind of stuff in the 1930s and it really chilled the behavior of other law-abiding Germans. A real turd-Kultur was created there. That kind of history ought best not be repeated.
If people alter their behavior because they are afraid of being tormented by Internet-spawned wrongful "meat world" attacks, then they are not free. Balancing protection from such acts with the right to freely interact on the internet is a serious legal and moral challenge.
While I'm not too thrilled about people taking the law into their own hands, lets try to keep some perspective. How many innocent people have been jailed or executed by our 'proper' systems of justice? More than a few, I'll bet. Judges and juries are prone to making mistakes just like the rest of us. Most of these internet vigilante cases so far have ended in personal information being made public, threats against the suspects and evidence being sent to local authorities who take it from there (unless the person didn't actually commit a crime in his country). I'm hoping the internet gives some sense of separation from the issue that keeps people from doing anything too rash, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
The outcome ultimately is justice through online voting and consensus systems, like the moderation system here, or the various systems of community sanctions over at Wikipedia. The problem is not that these systems are unfair, since they are arguably no worse than traditional legal systems (whose track record is far from perfect). The problem is that they are open to manipulation by people who have the willingness and the knowhow to game the system.
My fucking god! Every time I turn around, there comes to my attention yet another sick thing I couldn't possibly have imagined on my own. "Kitten Killing Videos"?? Holy crap!! And no, nobody needs to list "things sicker than kitten killing videos" and definitely do not post links. To this day, I have not watched two girls and a cup. It was the Daniel Pearlman video that convinced me that if I am warned that I shouldn't see a video, I should probably heed the warning. It cured my "morbid sense of curiosity" forever. (Movie violence be damned, but for all my "kill the spammers" rants, I doubt I could actually stomach actually being the executioner... handing down the sentence is one thing, but actually killing another person? Probably more than I can handle.)
I'm sure Grace Wang would agree with you.
In brief, Grace Wang was an international student at Duke and dared to try an initiate a discussion between the pro-Tibet and pro-Chinese sides of a protest. After being attacked on forums such as mitbbs.com "Online Vigilantes" decided to bring these attacks to the real world by posting her personal information (her student visa application) and providing maps to her parents' house (which was defaced, causing her parents to go into hiding).
Defending kittens are one thing, but as with "think of the children", it rarely stops there.
Wasn't this predicted years ago by Bruce Sterling in Makeki Neko? Use of the 'net to commit "death by a thousand paper cuts", or harassment by many, many small acts, each of which individually wouldn't be considered unlawful, but in aggregate become overwhelming? I'm not sure whether it is a good thing or a bad thing, but it almost certainly is going to happen.
Those stories are nothing more than a return to anarchy and lawlessness dressed up as something noble by the article.
Vigilantism is the backlash against lawlessness; in this case the lack of a justice system capable of convicting and punishing sadistic animal abusers has been corrected by a band of on-line judge/jury/executioners. To say that it's the height of civility is a stretch, but 'lawless' it certainly is not either.
Maybe people could use their brains and realize that killing kittens is not the worst thing in the world. All this outrage is ridiculous. Murder and rape in war torn countries, a okay, a kitten gets killed, lets all get together and catch the bastard.
I shouldn't help that guy over there, because there are millions of other people who need my help in Africa!
That is fallacious reasoning.
People who kill kittens for fun are probably going to be dangerous in other ways. It is one of the signs of a burgeoning serial killer, for example. Actually, if I saw someone killing a kitten for fun on the street, I'd beat them within an inch of their lives, then take the kitten home with me, then call the cops on him, and his boss, and his family.
If you find hurting defenseless living things funny, then I really don't want you in my society, since I'm sure you can go far beyond "just" kittens.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Not sure if you are writing this from a country besides the US, but here, vigilantism is not met with a lack of punishment for the offender. It is illegal to enact certain "justices" outside the realm of law enforcement. However to compare a group of people finding an animal abuser (which is also a precursor to human abuse/murder/serial killers) to people in the South lynching "dem #$%^#$ers" is flaimbait at best.
For one thing, you deny justice to a group of individuals for too long, they WILL take it into their own hands, two how do you think laws and values and morals came into being? It wasn't just plopped down to us like Prometheus and Fire....three I ask you, "SO WHAT?" I think if a crime is commited, and I can respond to it in a way that will prevent further loss of life, realty, property, et al. before anyone else can, then I will. You'll notice that in cities like New York it is now a CRIME to ignore a crime in progress (Good Samaratin law) There is a reason for that, people like those in this thread who think vigilantism has no cause in society. I say to you that the LACK thereof is a big factor in our complete slide into a pit of hedonistic, self aggrandizing filth that is our current state of affairs, and that when people don't take a stand for what they feel is right (or against what is wrong) then you merely have a group of good people doing NOTHING to change the course of events (see the US during the beginning stages of either World War) Pacifism is not the answer, nor will it ever be, just read a history book for more reasons why.
"This is the value of a summer spent and a winter earned"
I fucking despise cats with a passion not unlike that of fundies hatred of homosexuals. Saying that, i also believe any scumbag fucker that would torture or needlessly kill a cat should be given over to whatever psycho-sexual torture killer on the local death row to use as an unwilling victim as a reward for said psycho killer's good behavior. That kind of behavior, IMNSHO, is disgusting and perverted. It outrages me far more than crimes against people, as people at least have the theoretical ability to protect themselves. Cats and dogs have been specifically bred to consider humans as "safe".
Tell that to the black and Jewish victims of lynching in the south. Yes, in many cases vigilantism can be a form of law enforcement. The problem though is that when a group of citizens answers to no one the potential for abuse and stepping beyond law enforcement is definitely there.
You set up a beautiful straw man argument and knocked it down...
But harrassment and social ostracism are in no way equivalent to a lynching.
Not even death threats and bricks through the window rise to that level.
You have a point in there, but your hyperbole saps it of any meaning.
Yes, in the two cases cited it seems to have worked out in the interest of justice, but they could just as easily have found somebody that wasn't guilty.
So give us an equal number of counter examples. It can't be that hard.
Or even better, find some non-anecdotal statistics that supports your otherwise overhyped assertion.
I've only heard of a handful of cases where crowd-sourced justice misidentified the perpetrator and yet you can find endless threads on the internet (car forums are especially fruitful) where vigilantism peacefully named and shamed the guilty.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It may not be more correct behavior (from a social standpoint) to be a vigilante than an animal abuser, and perhaps even not more "civilized", but in a case like that, I'll side with the vigilante. There are behaviors that I would regard as inherently evil. Some vigilantes do things that are inherently evil. Some do things that are what I would consider good. The problem with the class of people "vigilante" in general is that they're acting outside of an exterior controlling force, so you have no guarantee that they're working for the betterment of society. But an animal or human abuser that causes harm without benefiting society (as opposed to a medical researchers or equivalent) is scum. There's no chance that they're doing something good, or for the right reasons. I can't bring myself to condemn someone who would fight against that kind of behavior.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.