I haven't seen any of the video or read past the intro of any news stories, just reading about it here is enough for me. I trust others' judgement that it's bad. It's been a few years since I've been to any (ahem) "rotten" sites on the Net, and I'm better off not seeing stuff like that.
I wouldn't call anonymous a good or bad thing, though I think exposing people like this is a very good thing.It's so easy for us as a society to sweep things under the carpet and pretend that they don't exist but this forces us to face them. A bit more transparency is good for society, in my opinion.
But (as robeiae said) the Anonymous people/group/entities are not being transparent about their own identities.
I am reminded of all those discussions in fantasy books about the nature of magic, and how it's not good or evil on its own, it depends on who wields it.
Yes, who and how. That's been widely said about
technology, too.
I think it's important to note he isn't laughing "at a rape joke" he's laughing at a girl who has just been raped, a rape he apparently witnessed. Even if he was high during the video and when he made the tweets, I doubt he was high when he helped cover it up.
ETA: and Chrissy, right, I didn't mean he should be locked up. I was more talking about the idea of collectively letting people know that their behavior is abhorrent. It was suggesting the opposite, in fact. Not that he be arrested, as few people would have someone arrested for what he did. And so, in lieu of what we all agree would be government overstepping, it becomes an issue of social condemnation. He can't and shouldn't be arrested, but collectively shaming him works against the neutralization effect he gets within his group of asshole friends. Instead of 30 people who are okay with it, it becomes almost everyone on the internet agreeing it was shitty.
He witnessed a felony being committed and he did nothing to stop it himself and didn't notify authorities. That in itself is a felony. If police had known in time what was happening, the girl's life might have been saved.
A parallel could be drawn to the shock jocks who showed how poor hospital security was. With the unintended consequence of prompting a suicide.
Being named and shamed on the internet most likely, in my opinion, leads to retribution and shunning more often then to making a person even more anti-social, than leading to them mending their ways.
We have plenty of examples of this, e.g. kitten in the bin video etc.
I think the shock jocks thing is different in so many ways - they didn't expect to get as far as they did, didn't mean any actual harm, and of course after the suicide they were hugely remorseful. The guys in the video apparently have no remorse, and their only regret was getting caught.
There was the video a few years ago, an unnamed US soldier threw a puppy over a cliff. As I recall, the video being on Youtube led to the perp being identified and punished.
Whether they "mend their ways" is up to them, but publicizing the event generally leads to justice being done.
Was the video provided to the police as evidence, though? That would seem like a good thing to do with it. At least giving them a chance to get their act together before inviting mob action.
Perhaps folks are forgetting that if the local police are thought to be involved in a cover up, there's also the option of going to the state police. And if anons really wanted to "do good", that's what they should have done with this video.
So what was the real purpose here? Bringing this to light, bringing these people to justice - or self-aggrandizing?
There may be a point in the purpose being self-aggrandizing, it may even be the main point, but now all relevant local, state and federal police (as in the FBI) are aware of the case. The video is evidence that would be presented in the case, and surely leak out to the public regardless.
There's perhaps an argument that publicizing the video before a trial may make it harder to find jurors who haven't heard of the case, but I think at least in this case publicizing the video is on the whole for the good.
Maybe, but when the people doing the shouting are wrapped in anonymity, it's a major contradiction. After, that's information as well...
Yes. This. There's something about hiding behind a mask that bothers me, though I can't quite put it into words. At least Julian Assange, no matter what else he might have done or been accused of, had the balls to stand up and be the public face of Wikileaks. I can only wonder about this quasi-organization named Anonymous.
