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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.
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.