On Anonymous

[Shamus Young]

Shamus, if people protested in the middle of the street, they'd get arrested just the same. They'd just get arrested for a petty misdemeanor and released the next day, where as protesting online by taking down a website is a felony.

Mainly, it because lawmakers don't know dick about how the internet works. It's a series of tubes after all.

Actually, there were anti-war protests like that. Nobody was arrested. (It's a tricky thing. Arrest the protesters and make them into victims for their cause, or leave them be and allow them to cause problems for everyone.)

I think it's the same thing with anon. By reacting with "OMG ANONYMOUS!!!!!!11!" we give their cause attention.

 

[Therumancer]

Well, I think there is an important distinction that needs to be made here. Anonymous isn't quite an organization that anyone can join by claiming to be a member, or even sharing a common ideaology, as far they have one goes. Anonymous is a group one "joins" by the general consensus of the other members making up the core, effectively making them part of the core themselves. Anonymous itself has been very careful to point out that it, and the hordes of /B/ are not the same thing. You even see a divide in 4chan terms between the so called "Oldfags" and the "Newfags" with a clear differance between those who do things, and those who wear Guy Fawkes masks and spout the memes. The big differance is that Anonymous doesn't generally walk around stating who is a member, or part of the core entity, and who is not.

This latest raid on Sony, combined with the recent attention, largeely seemed to panic a bunch of the "Newfags" who are scared of getting "Vanned" because they were playing the role of big-bad hacker, without the skills or protection they professed to have, and are concerned that they were going to be targeted. The whole "Anonymous Civil War" sort of being a sign that the people involved were never part of the Anonymous core on any signifigant level, and all discussion to the contrary, very few people involved probably had anything to do with the actual attacks of did any of the heavy lifting.

One thing about Anonymous, or any hacker group, is that they generally do not DENY doing things. They either take credit, or remain silent and let people wonder. A denial from Anonymous probably means that the person speaking was in no way connected to the actual collective.

If your at all curious, do some reading about the previous generation of big, well known hackers. Groups like "Masters Of Deception" and "Legion Of Doom", along with the war that actually wound up destroying them, assuming it ever really went down like people claim since a lot of people even now say that there never was a great hacker war.

The point being that Anonymous is not really some new phenomena, it's just that with the mainstream getting online, groups like this have become more visible to the mainstream, and due to businesses like Sony being so heavily invested online, they have become increasingly vulnerable, with more people noticing the activities, and more disclosure being forced.

I guess what I'm saying is that a lot of people who think they "get" Anonymous, don't really "get" Anonymous. The excuse that it's an idealogy that can't be targeted because anyone can be a member... shades of things like the "Stand Alone Complex" from the Ghost In The Shell Series (ie an event so compelling that it inspired seperate people and groups to be working towards the same goal, to the point of them seeming connected but they actually aren't), is less terrifying than the truth that at the core there are a group of people who are actually doing this, and who society can't deal with... and yes, that pretty much is the case, Anonymous might involve Anonimity and so on, but remember in their real operations real people are actually breaking through this security, it does not occur due to some mass of willpower. The authorities have never been able to deal with hackers very well at all, and really the only reason why MoD and Legion Of Doom ever fell by all accounts was because they went to war with each other (ie it took a hacker group to stop another hacker group) with the police actually being just a tool they used. Independant police actions leading to things like the seizure of the GURPS Cyberpunk book (famously in geek circles) and lots of early "lulz" rather thsan anything tangible. The hackers of that time frame hid behind handles before anyone had each other. The joke being that if the police actually got someone or needed a name to pin responsibility on, with Legion Of Doom they would wind up blaming well known comic book super villains. To this day I don't believe anyone officially knows who Lex Luthor was, is, or if he even existed or was as some have hinted a construct, hiding that Legion Of Doom didn't have an official leader.

I guess the point of my rant is context... I think it's better to try and put Anonymous in line with history and what we know. In the end I think there is some truth to them being a non-organization, where nobody knows who anyone else is, but that does not preclude them from having a membership that actually gets things done. It's just that instead of everyone communicating by say using the names of DC super villains, they all just post anonymously. The people in the core membership probably setting up meeting times and channels, and getting into the core being a matter of simply being let in on when the real business is going down. A lot of these other Anons, well they are also part of Anonymous but largely part of it's disguise, and the fact that they coordinate raids and such as well with mixed results helps add to the whole mystique.

Such are my general thoughts on the subject, in the end we may never know if I'm right. Basically Anonymous manages to be both the collective, and also to have a solid core of membership who do the heavy lifting, and pull off the things that require coordination and detailed knowlege.

 

[Starke]

Okay let's break it down.
First example: Don't recall that, could you provide link. Regardless, when anyone can claim to be a member of an organization, there are bound to be a few dicks.

Someone else may still have the link floating around, but the crux of it was that anon attacked a teenage girl because she refused to expose herself on her webcam when they demanded she do so.

The problem was, this did bring the full weight of anonymous down on her.

Second Example: It's Justin Bieber. Are you accusing Anon of having taste?

So having bad taste is enough to provoke them? Again, aside from being a shitty performer, he didn't do anything to provoke them.

Third Example: Gene Simmons didn't just speak his mind, he openly taunted hackers. I seem to remember a certain pundit making an analogy involving "sticking your dick in a hornet's nest"? Like I told Clipclop: Don't START nuthin, There won't BE nothin. And the last time I checked, Anon didn't exactly put Gene in the poor house.

No. And if you can't remember what Simmons said, please go back and refresh your memory. He didn't say shit about hackers. He was telling the industry what he thought about pirates.

Gene Simmons is in an industry that has shrunk more than 50% in the last decade. That's not random bullshit facts, that's the industry is half the size it was in 2000. You can blame piracy, a shift to a new marketing paradigm, or whatever. When presented with this, Simmons blames piracy.

And in case you've forgotten somehow, piracy is a crime. Flat out, full stop.

He told the industry what they needed to do was get serious about going after direct infringers. "...sue the shit out of them..." He did it with the kind of bravado you'd expect from a (literal) rock star. But at the end of the day he spoke his mind.

There are reasons why the industry doesn't do that right now. I'd explain, but it's not the point at hand.

Anonymous looks at that, says "we support free speech", and attacks him, because they don't support free speech, they support free speech so long as you agree with them.

He wasn't "being an asshole", he wasn't stepping on anyone's toes. He was speaking his mind. Anonymous decided they didn't like that, and stomped on him.

Now, you're right, it didn't hurt him, he came back laughing, sneering, and promising revenge, but at the end of the day, it really does take your argument out back, putting a bullet through each of it's knees before finally stabling it in the gut and leaving it to die.

Anon is nothing more than a bunch of schoolyard bullies. They have (I guess you could call it) a little self restraint in that they only go after things they don't like, but they're not predictable about what they will or won't like. And then they hide behind bullshit claims like having no leadership [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/the-hackers-hacked-main-anonymous-irc-servers-seized.ars] or a belief in freedom of speech.

 

[FredTheUndead]

Well, I think there is an important distinction that needs to be made here. Anonymous isn't quite an organization that anyone can join by claiming to be a member, or even sharing a common ideaology, as far they have one goes. Anonymous is a group one "joins" by the general consensus of the other members making up the core, effectively making them part of the core themselves. Anonymous itself has been very careful to point out that it, and the hordes of /B/ are not the same thing. You even see a divide in 4chan terms between the so called "Oldfags" and the "Newfags" with a clear differance between those who do things, and those who wear Guy Fawkes masks and spout the memes. The big differance is that Anonymous doesn't generally walk around stating who is a member, or part of the core entity, and who is not.

This latest raid on Sony, combined with the recent attention, largeely seemed to panic a bunch of the "Newfags" who are scared of getting "Vanned" because they were playing the role of big-bad hacker, without the skills or protection they professed to have, and are concerned that they were going to be targeted. The whole "Anonymous Civil War" sort of being a sign that the people involved were never part of the Anonymous core on any signifigant level, and all discussion to the contrary, very few people involved probably had anything to do with the actual attacks of did any of the heavy lifting.

One thing about Anonymous, or any hacker group, is that they generally do not DENY doing things. They either take credit, or remain silent and let people wonder. A denial from Anonymous probably means that the person speaking was in no way connected to the actual collective.

If your at all curious, do some reading about the previous generation of big, well known hackers. Groups like "Masters Of Deception" and "Legion Of Doom", along with the war that actually wound up destroying them, assuming it ever really went down like people claim since a lot of people even now say that there never was a great hacker war.

The point being that Anonymous is not really some new phenomena, it's just that with the mainstream getting online, groups like this have become more visible to the mainstream, and due to businesses like Sony being so heavily invested online, they have become increasingly vulnerable, with more people noticing the activities, and more disclosure being forced.

I guess what I'm saying is that a lot of people who think they "get" Anonymous, don't really "get" Anonymous. The excuse that it's an idealogy that can't be targeted because anyone can be a member... shades of things like the "Stand Alone Complex" from the Ghost In The Shell Series (ie an event so compelling that it inspired seperate people and groups to be working towards the same goal, to the point of them seeming connected but they actually aren't), is less terrifying than the truth that at the core there are a group of people who are actually doing this, and who society can't deal with... and yes, that pretty much is the case, Anonymous might involve Anonimity and so on, but remember in their real operations real people are actually breaking through this security, it does not occur due to some mass of willpower. The authorities have never been able to deal with hackers very well at all, and really the only reason why MoD and Legion Of Doom ever fell by all accounts was because they went to war with each other (ie it took a hacker group to stop another hacker group) with the police actually being just a tool they used. Independant police actions leading to things like the seizure of the GURPS Cyberpunk book (famously in geek circles) and lots of early "lulz" rather thsan anything tangible. The hackers of that time frame hid behind handles before anyone had each other. The joke being that if the police actually got someone or needed a name to pin responsibility on, with Legion Of Doom they would wind up blaming well known comic book super villains. To this day I don't believe anyone officially knows who Lex Luthor was, is, or if he even existed or was as some have hinted a construct, hiding that Legion Of Doom didn't have an official leader.

I guess the point of my rant is context... I think it's better to try and put Anonymous in line with history and what we know. In the end I think there is some truth to them being a non-organization, where nobody knows who anyone else is, but that does not preclude them from having a membership that actually gets things done. It's just that instead of everyone communicating by say using the names of DC super villains, they all just post anonymously. The people in the core membership probably setting up meeting times and channels, and getting into the core being a matter of simply being let in on when the real business is going down. A lot of these other Anons, well they are also part of Anonymous but largely part of it's disguise, and the fact that they coordinate raids and such as well with mixed results helps add to the whole mystique.

Such are my general thoughts on the subject, in the end we may never know if I'm right. Basically Anonymous manages to be both the collective, and also to have a solid core of membership who do the heavy lifting, and pull off the things that require coordination and detailed knowlege.

More or less what he said. Damn it Shamus, it's blatantly obvious that you go to /v/ from lines in Spoiler Warning Seasons 1 and 2, you shouldn't be playing into this "Anonymous is an actual organization, not some weird protesters borrowing phrases from an image board" thing.

 

[Starke]

I think Anonymous is better than other types of protesters because you can't just call the police and have them driven off. If Anonymous has a problem with you, you're gunna have to listen.

And what if the message is completely wrong and spiteful? What if they have no message and instead just feel like trolling you to oblivion? What do you do than?

Stop watching Fox News, that's what I do.

To bad you can't "stop" anon when they have you in their sights. I'm sure plenty of people wished they could turn them off, eh?

Best way to turn of Anonymous? Don't be an asshole in the first place.

You don't have to be an asshole to get tagged, you just have to do something that rubs them the wrong way.

We now just went back full circle into the fact that they are nothing but bullies. Its like being on a playground and hoping you don't get the attention of the abnormally large jock 5th graders, the main difference here is that there are no teachers to call them off, you have the full force of socially stunted man babies doing all they can to tear you down.

Oh DearNow all those poor innocent government agencies and multi-billion dollar corporations will have to stand-up for themselves. =( http://10.media.tumblr.com/kOL4hm20xikn90c7VxR6FkxVo1_400.jpg
Don't START nothing, then there won't BE nothin.

That's easily the worst response you've come up with thus far. If you truly think that big governments are the only thing they have attacked mercilessly than your pretty much only fooling yourself and i feel sorry for you because of it. Seriously.

If YOU think that all of Anonymous' victims are completely innocent and defenseless than you're pretty much only fooling yourself and I feel sorry you because of it. Seriously.

they attack everything from children to governments and everything in between. Just because somebody pissed you off online doesn't give you the right to send hundreds and hundreds of your buddies in his direction. You wouldn't do it in real life, but of course your keyboard warriors can gang up on single targets online.

No one deserves to have a mob at their door step. If you had any grasp on reality anymore you'd probably realize this for half a second.

Let's not forget that the published personal information for HB Gary employees. Including their Social Security Numbers. These are people who literally did nothing to provoke anonymous. They literally did not even work for the security firm. They worked for a separate company that was directly affiliated with the firm. People with no control over the corporation, no involvement in the black hat activities of the security firm. Nothing. Their only crime was getting a job at a company.

 

[Low Key]

Shamus, if people protested in the middle of the street, they'd get arrested just the same. They'd just get arrested for a petty misdemeanor and released the next day, where as protesting online by taking down a website is a felony.

Mainly, it because lawmakers don't know dick about how the internet works. It's a series of tubes after all.

Actually, there were anti-war protests like that. Nobody was arrested. (It's a tricky thing. Arrest the protesters and make them into victims for their cause, or leave them be and allow them to cause problems for everyone.)

I think it's the same thing with anon. By reacting with "OMG ANONYMOUS!!!!!!11!" we give their cause attention.

You are correct. Some protests avoid police intervention despite being a nuisance to the general public, but that's just not the case for the vast majority. It has to do with the power and conviction of the message, who the sympathizers are, and the number of people protesting amongst other extenuating circumstances.

I don't believe Anon has reached that pinnacle of protesting yet because they do too many things "for the lulz". Take political activism for example. If people who support your party protest and get arrested, you'll probably be sympathetic towards them. But if protesters who support the opposing party get arrested, you're probably more apt to believe they deserve it. This is all because whatever these two examples seem to be protesting for, you're either for or against, and it's hard to find topics of protest that can cross those kind of bounds. Then when it comes to the lulz, it's like someone going out and protesting for gay marriage, but then turning around and protesting for equality for hamsters. No one really wants to back a loose cannon.

 

[iDoom46]

That was a pretty well thought out and enjoyable read, and I agree with what you said. Anon really isn't as dangerous as people make them out to be, mostly due to their lack of any real group structure. Hell, we've all seen them in action at some point or another and its like watching a dysfunctional family argue over who killed the dog.

I'm pretty sure the biggest problem Anonymous faces is that occasionally, some people can't tell the difference between "an anonymous hacker" and "a hacker from Anonymous."

 

[Hristo Tzonkov]

Okay let's break it down.
First example: Don't recall that, could you provide link. Regardless, when anyone can claim to be a member of an organization, there are bound to be a few dicks.

Someone else may still have the link floating around, but the crux of it was that anon attacked a teenage girl because she refused to expose herself on her webcam when they demanded she do so.

The problem was, this did bring the full weight of anonymous down on her.

Second Example: It's Justin Bieber. Are you accusing Anon of having taste?

So having bad taste is enough to provoke them? Again, aside from being a shitty performer, he didn't do anything to provoke them.

Third Example: Gene Simmons didn't just speak his mind, he openly taunted hackers. I seem to remember a certain pundit making an analogy involving "sticking your dick in a hornet's nest"? Like I told Clipclop: Don't START nuthin, There won't BE nothin. And the last time I checked, Anon didn't exactly put Gene in the poor house.

No. And if you can't remember what Simmons said, please go back and refresh your memory. He didn't say shit about hackers. He was telling the industry what he thought about pirates.

Gene Simmons is in an industry that has shrunk more than 50% in the last decade. That's not random bullshit facts, that's the industry is half the size it was in 2000. You can blame piracy, a shift to a new marketing paradigm, or whatever. When presented with this, Simmons blames piracy.

And in case you've forgotten somehow, piracy is a crime. Flat out, full stop.

He told the industry what they needed to do was get serious about going after direct infringes. "...sue the shit out of them..." He did it with the kind of bravado you'd expect from a (literal) rock star. But at the end of the day he spoke his mind.

There are reasons why the industry doesn't do that right now. I'd explain, but it's not the point at hand.

Anonymous looks at that, says "we support free speech", and attacks him, because they don't support free speech, they support free speech so long as you agree with them.

He wasn't "being an asshole", he wasn't stepping on anyone's toes. He was speaking his mind. Anonymous decided they didn't like that, and stomped on him.

Now, you're right, it didn't hurt him, he came back laughing, sneering, and promising revenge, but at the end of the day, it really does take your argument out back, putting a bullet through each of it's knees before finally stabling it in the gut and leaving it to die.

Anon is nothing more than a bunch of schoolyard bullies. They have (I guess you could call it) a little self restraint in that they only go after things they don't like, but they're not predictable about what they will or won't like. And then they hide behind bullshit claims like having no leadership [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/the-hackers-hacked-main-anonymous-irc-servers-seized.ars] or a belief in freedom of speech.

First off I remember that girl she was 12 and pretending to be 16 smack talking everyone.There was a big viral video of her dad calling out the FBI to arrest the internet.Being bullied for being a bully is the new way of life on the internet.Don't start shit.

Second the industry is built around making money out of other people's talent(or marketing their lack of).I feel no pity for piracy in that industry.Most authors today have said "I'd rather you see my concert and buy some merch than buy my cds" and a lot of them are shifting to a more pirate friendly distribution.Gene Simmons should stick to licking guitars rather than voicing some of his misunderstood ideologies.He yelled out that even a person pirating 1 song should be sued till he doesn't have anything but the shirt on his back.I call that offensive and Anon took measure.

Stop watching Fox News folks.And you've decided the internet of all places to brag about your ideals.Anonymous are lolfreedomfighters and they do it for the lols.The world isn't right and it should change if you have a better idea I'm sure there's someone to listen.

 

[FredTheUndead]

Well, I think there is an important distinction that needs to be made here. Anonymous isn't quite an organization that anyone can join by claiming to be a member, or even sharing a common ideaology, as far they have one goes. Anonymous is a group one "joins" by the general consensus of the other members making up the core, effectively making them part of the core themselves. Anonymous itself has been very careful to point out that it, and the hordes of /B/ are not the same thing. You even see a divide in 4chan terms between the so called "Oldfags" and the "Newfags" with a clear differance between those who do things, and those who wear Guy Fawkes masks and spout the memes. The big differance is that Anonymous doesn't generally walk around stating who is a member, or part of the core entity, and who is not.

This latest raid on Sony, combined with the recent attention, largeely seemed to panic a bunch of the "Newfags" who are scared of getting "Vanned" because they were playing the role of big-bad hacker, without the skills or protection they professed to have, and are concerned that they were going to be targeted. The whole "Anonymous Civil War" sort of being a sign that the people involved were never part of the Anonymous core on any signifigant level, and all discussion to the contrary, very few people involved probably had anything to do with the actual attacks of did any of the heavy lifting.

One thing about Anonymous, or any hacker group, is that they generally do not DENY doing things. They either take credit, or remain silent and let people wonder. A denial from Anonymous probably means that the person speaking was in no way connected to the actual collective.

If your at all curious, do some reading about the previous generation of big, well known hackers. Groups like "Masters Of Deception" and "Legion Of Doom", along with the war that actually wound up destroying them, assuming it ever really went down like people claim since a lot of people even now say that there never was a great hacker war.

The point being that Anonymous is not really some new phenomena, it's just that with the mainstream getting online, groups like this have become more visible to the mainstream, and due to businesses like Sony being so heavily invested online, they have become increasingly vulnerable, with more people noticing the activities, and more disclosure being forced.

I guess what I'm saying is that a lot of people who think they "get" Anonymous, don't really "get" Anonymous. The excuse that it's an idealogy that can't be targeted because anyone can be a member... shades of things like the "Stand Alone Complex" from the Ghost In The Shell Series (ie an event so compelling that it inspired seperate people and groups to be working towards the same goal, to the point of them seeming connected but they actually aren't), is less terrifying than the truth that at the core there are a group of people who are actually doing this, and who society can't deal with... and yes, that pretty much is the case, Anonymous might involve Anonimity and so on, but remember in their real operations real people are actually breaking through this security, it does not occur due to some mass of willpower. The authorities have never been able to deal with hackers very well at all, and really the only reason why MoD and Legion Of Doom ever fell by all accounts was because they went to war with each other (ie it took a hacker group to stop another hacker group) with the police actually being just a tool they used. Independant police actions leading to things like the seizure of the GURPS Cyberpunk book (famously in geek circles) and lots of early "lulz" rather thsan anything tangible. The hackers of that time frame hid behind handles before anyone had each other. The joke being that if the police actually got someone or needed a name to pin responsibility on, with Legion Of Doom they would wind up blaming well known comic book super villains. To this day I don't believe anyone officially knows who Lex Luthor was, is, or if he even existed or was as some have hinted a construct, hiding that Legion Of Doom didn't have an official leader.

I guess the point of my rant is context... I think it's better to try and put Anonymous in line with history and what we know. In the end I think there is some truth to them being a non-organization, where nobody knows who anyone else is, but that does not preclude them from having a membership that actually gets things done. It's just that instead of everyone communicating by say using the names of DC super villains, they all just post anonymously. The people in the core membership probably setting up meeting times and channels, and getting into the core being a matter of simply being let in on when the real business is going down. A lot of these other Anons, well they are also part of Anonymous but largely part of it's disguise, and the fact that they coordinate raids and such as well with mixed results helps add to the whole mystique.

Such are my general thoughts on the subject, in the end we may never know if I'm right. Basically Anonymous manages to be both the collective, and also to have a solid core of membership who do the heavy lifting, and pull off the things that require coordination and detailed knowlege.

More or less what he said. Damn it Shamus, it's blatantly obvious that you go to /v/ from lines in Spoiler Warning Seasons 1 and 2, you shouldn't be playing into this "Anonymous is an actual organization, not some weird protesters borrowing phrases from an image board" thing.

wait wait wait wait WAIT.


wait.


Your telling me the guy who wrote this article frequents 4chan. the place where all this started in the first place? NOW it all makes sense. I bet the EC guys also hang there as well.

Good lord this pretty much wraps up everything. Neutrality, oh how we knew ye.

Yeah 4chan isn't exactly what you seem to think it is. Or what anyone thinks it is.

It's mostly just a place where people talk about anime, comics, film, and video games. This We Are Legion bullshit is just runoff from the /b/ or "Random" board, which the entire rest of the site despises anyway.

 

[Hristo Tzonkov]

Gonna make this as simple as possible for you. Its a 12 year old acting stupid online. a bunch of mostly 21+ year olds completely wrecked her shit in the HUNDREDS. NOTHING she could have done would warrant this.

Nothing. And guess what? if they had come out from behind their keyboards, instead of being completely slimy poeple dispensing "justice" from hundreds of miles away. They would have all been arrested and put into INTENSIVE THERAPY for harassing in mass a 12 year old girl because she "deserved it"

This is not the way functioning humans adults are supposed to work. This is SICKENING.

Neither should a 12 yo girl function that way.It's her retarded kind that invented the kiddy cyber bullying.Running around fb posting shit on slightly chubby children further ruining their self esteem.You probably don't even know about that problem around the internet and it's not for the lulz or spawned from 4chan/anonymous.

PS:She did deserve it.And I lold when I saw it.

PSS:Thanks for making it simple.Totally reminded me of the whole ordeal and got me cheered up.

 

[Agayek]

Gonna make this as simple as possible for you. Its a 12 year old acting stupid online. a bunch of mostly 21+ year olds completely wrecked her shit in the HUNDREDS. NOTHING she could have done would warrant this.

Nothing. And guess what? if they had come out from behind their keyboards, instead of being completely slimy poeple dispensing "justice" from hundreds of miles away. They would have all been arrested and put into INTENSIVE THERAPY for harassing in mass a 12 year old girl because she "deserved it"

This is not the way functioning humans adults are supposed to work. This is SICKENING.

So basically what you're saying is that you have a massive hate-on for Anonymous. That's pretty much all you've had to say this whole thread.

Anons have done both good and bad things over the last few years. They're really no worse than any other collection of people, they just have a lot of media attention because they're the first such group on the internet. Really, most of them are nothing more than attention whores, and ranting and raving about how terrible they are just gives them attention. If you want them to stop, ignore them entirely.

 

[iDoom46]

they attack everything from children to governments and everything in between. Just because somebody pissed you off online doesn't give you the right to send hundreds and hundreds of your buddies in his direction. You wouldn't do it in real life, but of course your keyboard warriors can gang up on single targets online.

No one deserves to have a mob at their door step. If you had any grasp on reality anymore you'd probably realize this for half a second.

If you've EVER seen how the group works, then you'd know that simply isn't true.
You have to do something OVERTLY CRUEL OR OFFENSIVE (or, in some rare, unfortunate cases, extremely stupid) on the internet to warrant them attacking you. Otherwise, the typical response is "Not your personal army, GTFO."

You obviously don't understand Anonymous, what the group stands for, or how it works.

And Anonymous isn't the only group that does these things. Anonymous internet vigilantism happens all over the internet ALL THE DAMN TIME. Its just that most of the big instances in the western hemisphere get associated with Anonymous, by virtue of their name.