3 ms·

Anonymous also digitally lynched a guy assumed to have thrown a puppy off a bridge. Turned out they had the wrong guy. Vigilante justice is reckless and comes

by kmfrk 14y ago

Anonymous also digitally lynched a guy assumed to have thrown a puppy off a bridge. Turned out they had the wrong guy. Vigilante justice is reckless and comes with big risks, as romantic as it may sound to some to sit in the comfort of your desk chair and bring about digital justice.

sdoering 14y ago
> as romantic as it may sound to some to sit in the comfort of your desk chair and bring about digital justice. Isn't this romantic notion, bringing justice with a click the driving force of nearly every online-petition, and things like this. Isn't this romantic notion the reason why the new demo is so often practiced? New demo = to ddos someone to mars or jupiter, and rationalize it with: I could just as easily have gone to their headquarter and demoed there? Well most people could not have done it - and would not have done it in rain, snow, wind, driven 500 miles just to demo there, and so on. As a lot of psychological studies showed, people saying they would do something and people doing this thing in the real world (not in their imagination) are two totally different things. So there you have your real, underlying problem, a psychological problem, with this kind of digital activism. It is so totally different from real activism, and at the same time so new, that we really do not have proper ways as a society to deal with the dark sides of it.
- Klinky 14y ago
  One or a few people defacing or denying a target's digital presence gets everyone's attention. One or a few people picketing outside of the target's physical presence doesn't get any attention. The ability for one person to have that much power is either scary or empowering depending on your point of view.
  - tripzilch 14y ago
    You mean "both". And/or, it's definitely not an either/or thing.
    - Klinky 14y ago
      I should have qualified it with "of the actions taken, and the targets background", but yeah I guess I could have said "both". I didn't like how cliche "both scary and empowering at the same time" sounded. Additionally, it seems some people have a hard time realizing they have polarized views of the same thing in their head. So while it may be both scary and empowering, people can have strong polarized views of the same topic without realizing it, it just depends on their point of view at the time. Maybe I was trying to get people to think and realize that such things exist in their mind, or maybe I am giving myself too much credit for an omission of words.
Falling3 14y ago
Is there much difference between bad vigilante justice and bad institutional justice? How about the good variety? We know the criminal justice gets things wrong all the time. I guess we'd like to say accountability, but even that's not really there. Take Louis Cuen Taylor, who just spent over 40 years in prison for setting fire to a hotel, despite actually helping the police attempt to save people. After all this time, it was finally accepted that there was no evidence whatsoever that Taylor actually committed the crime. He was released after pleading No Contest, making it very difficult for him to get any sort of reparations. So yes, he was finally released, but with 4 decades of his life taken from him.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  The difference is recklessness, a word previous user used. Bad things happen even with reasonable safeguards in place - cars will keep crashing even if everyone is alert and sober, yet there is still a world of difference between a drunk swerving between lanes and a sober/attentive driver. The fact that the criminal justice system, based around impartial trials, the right to defend yourself before your charges, and the assumption of innocence, will at times ensnare innocents is not an excuse to adopt the opposite system - i.e., the assumption of guilt, mob justice, and the lack of opportunity to defend oneself. Put more practically, the difference between bad vigilante justice and bad institutional justice is its occurrence rate. Vigilante justice frequently ensnares innocents - the other posts in this thread demonstrate this in spades, and makes wrongful convictions in the US criminal justice system look like a drop in the bucket.
  - tripzilch 14y ago
    > Vigilante justice frequently ensnares innocents - the other posts in this thread demonstrate this in spades, and makes wrongful convictions in the US criminal justice system look like a drop in the bucket. Any country that has an incarceration rate 5-10x higher than most other countries ("civilized" or not), I'd be real hesitant to call their wrongful convictions a "drop in a bucket". I'd be in agreement with that argument if it were any other country. Still, vigilante justice is (of course) not a solution for the US because if that became commonplace, it'd be even worse. Less incarcerations, but you may not like what they'd get replaced with.
ryguytilidie 14y ago
Anonymous called in a bomb threat on my girlfriends office because they don't know how internet hosting works. Really sucks how much being misinformed and out for vigilante justice seem to overlap nowadays.
luke-stanley 14y ago
What does digitally lynched mean?

by kmfrk 14y ago

sdoering 14y ago

> as romantic as it may sound to some to sit in the comfort of your desk chair and bring about digital justice. Isn't this romantic notion, bringing justice with a click the driving force of nearly every online-petition, and things like this. Isn't this romantic notion the reason why the new demo is so often practiced? New demo = to ddos someone to mars or jupiter, and rationalize it with: I could just as easily have gone to their headquarter and demoed there? Well most people could not have done it - and would not have done it in rain, snow, wind, driven 500 miles just to demo there, and so on. As a lot of psychological studies showed, people saying they would do something and people doing this thing in the real world (not in their imagination) are two totally different things. So there you have your real, underlying problem, a psychological problem, with this kind of digital activism. It is so totally different from real activism, and at the same time so new, that we really do not have proper ways as a society to deal with the dark sides of it.

Klinky 14y ago
One or a few people defacing or denying a target's digital presence gets everyone's attention. One or a few people picketing outside of the target's physical presence doesn't get any attention. The ability for one person to have that much power is either scary or empowering depending on your point of view.
- tripzilch 14y ago
  You mean "both". And/or, it's definitely not an either/or thing.
  - Klinky 14y ago
    I should have qualified it with "of the actions taken, and the targets background", but yeah I guess I could have said "both". I didn't like how cliche "both scary and empowering at the same time" sounded. Additionally, it seems some people have a hard time realizing they have polarized views of the same thing in their head. So while it may be both scary and empowering, people can have strong polarized views of the same topic without realizing it, it just depends on their point of view at the time. Maybe I was trying to get people to think and realize that such things exist in their mind, or maybe I am giving myself too much credit for an omission of words.

Falling3 14y ago

Is there much difference between bad vigilante justice and bad institutional justice? How about the good variety? We know the criminal justice gets things wrong all the time. I guess we'd like to say accountability, but even that's not really there. Take Louis Cuen Taylor, who just spent over 40 years in prison for setting fire to a hotel, despite actually helping the police attempt to save people. After all this time, it was finally accepted that there was no evidence whatsoever that Taylor actually committed the crime. He was released after pleading No Contest, making it very difficult for him to get any sort of reparations. So yes, he was finally released, but with 4 decades of his life taken from him.

potatolicious 14y ago
The difference is recklessness, a word previous user used. Bad things happen even with reasonable safeguards in place - cars will keep crashing even if everyone is alert and sober, yet there is still a world of difference between a drunk swerving between lanes and a sober/attentive driver. The fact that the criminal justice system, based around impartial trials, the right to defend yourself before your charges, and the assumption of innocence, will at times ensnare innocents is not an excuse to adopt the opposite system - i.e., the assumption of guilt, mob justice, and the lack of opportunity to defend oneself. Put more practically, the difference between bad vigilante justice and bad institutional justice is its occurrence rate. Vigilante justice frequently ensnares innocents - the other posts in this thread demonstrate this in spades, and makes wrongful convictions in the US criminal justice system look like a drop in the bucket.
- tripzilch 14y ago
  > Vigilante justice frequently ensnares innocents - the other posts in this thread demonstrate this in spades, and makes wrongful convictions in the US criminal justice system look like a drop in the bucket. Any country that has an incarceration rate 5-10x higher than most other countries ("civilized" or not), I'd be real hesitant to call their wrongful convictions a "drop in a bucket". I'd be in agreement with that argument if it were any other country. Still, vigilante justice is (of course) not a solution for the US because if that became commonplace, it'd be even worse. Less incarcerations, but you may not like what they'd get replaced with.

ryguytilidie 14y ago

Anonymous called in a bomb threat on my girlfriends office because they don't know how internet hosting works. Really sucks how much being misinformed and out for vigilante justice seem to overlap nowadays.

luke-stanley 14y ago

What does digitally lynched mean?