I've been reading the topic for the past few days myself and i've seen your posts and quite frankly i don't care either way, but i've got 399 posts while you have 92 and who are you to tell me i'm not a long time poster along with the fact you are very one sided and you know "you could also easily not come here and reply to my post".Clipclop said:
On Anonymous
- Thread starter Shamus Young
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Can I has cookie? To be fair, this is a subject where the lines are pretty clearly drawn. That said, there are some pretty entertaining and or interesting points coming up in a number of posts, so saying this thread should be hauled out behind the woodshed does strike me as somewhat premature.Shadow-Phoenix said:
Alright, I had a nice long post about what Anonymous is on page... 3 or 4, I forget.Starke said:If you want a different perspective, I'm simply disappointed.Sudenak said:
Anonymous started out claiming some kind of noble intent, but that got lost a long time ago somewhere along the way.
I'm not sure I was ever ideologically in their camp, but their post-Scientology actions have poisoned me against the group pretty effectively.
As much as it pains me, to admit it, you have a point, there's a possibility that Anonymous did take down PSN, but that seems kinda unlikely at this point.Sudenak said:
It is most likely that, in this case, they were implicated as scapegoats by some third party. I'm not excusing or even defending the organization, just that this may be the one time they genuinely didn't do it.
As much as I want to snark, that really is the problem with Anonymous: It continues to claim it can be "literally anybody", but it's not. It is, or was, a fairly coherent cabal pretending to be non-existent. On one hand it's laudable for just how balls out insane it is to say that in the first place. But, it has left them in the position where they have no way to effectively control what they did or did not do. They used kids as a disposable smokescreen for their activities, and whether they were some kind of internet freedom fighters, electronic terrorists, or just trolls, their inability to control what was or was not a part of their operations lead them to where they are now, blamed for things they arguably did not do, while engaging in activities that are guaranteed to get them sent up a creek.Sudenak said:
Clipclop observed that some of them are guilty of crimes that carry a 25 year sentence, and in that he is sadly mistaken. Some of the actions Anon members have engaged in are capital crimes.
Yay, being able to think for myself is hard and I approve any law that removes my ability to think for my self with an icepick.Sudenak said:
In all fairness I probably could write something in defense of it... it wouldn't coincide with my personal opinions though...
Either way, Anonymous did NOT start out claiming noble intent. The original intent of Anonymous was always "For the Lulz". The "noble" side of Anon came about after Operation Chanology/Project Chanology.
Also, interestingly enough, there are certain core groups within "Anonymous", groups that know each other. Yet, what I find hilarious is that just because its easy to tell that, that instantly "Anonymous" should all of a sudden NOT be "Anonymous" anymore. A group of people who were already friends all join the Anonymous mob, and have ideas that the mob takes up. They do this multiple times through carefully crafting their ideas and posts so that the mob will take up their cause. This gives them the ability to direct the mob toward their goals. All of a sudden, these people are the "CORE LEADERZ OF ANONYMOUS!", which for some reason, means "Anonymous" has a core leadership? Give it a rest, the only reason Anonymous seems coherent is because once the mob takes up a cause, it rushes forward blindly and makes sure that the cause is filled with hilarity. Usually because the results will ENSURE everyone gets lulz, whether or not the cause is righteous or not doesn't matter. And at any time, the mob can decide they don't want to take up the cause.
Anonymous does not want to control the actions of Anonymous. Some "spokesanons" like to try to make sure that "Anonymous" doesn't get blamed for shit they didn't do, and will say "Anonymous did it" or "Anonymous didn't do it", but as has been noted, Anonymous can be literally anyone. The main hackers that tend to start up certain operations and follow specific ideals may not have done it, but that doesn't matter. Anonymous shouldn't be considered a group. It's a blanket term for anyone who doesn't want their identity revealed. And if you don't want your identity revealed... Why not hide behind the wall of Anon?
So you can't get them to turn on each other because they don't know each other? Oh, but they do. Wasn't there an article not so long ago about an Anonymous Civil War, and some twit threatening to expose the IP addresses of the other twits? I think this reveals that Anonymous can, in fact, be taken down IF you go after the ringleaders rather than the grunts first, because apparently the other Anonymous members aren't so anonymous to them...
I applaud Clipclop for speaking out against Anon. I hope they and all their supporters will, despite disagreeing with what he says, "die to defend his right to say it".
Or you could, you know, just attack him personally and refuse to listen to the reasons he gives for hating anon solely *because* he hates anon...
P.S. Here's to us all going meta and using free speech to defend free speech's advocates as they attack the free speech of the "enemies" of free speech!
Or you could, you know, just attack him personally and refuse to listen to the reasons he gives for hating anon solely *because* he hates anon...
P.S. Here's to us all going meta and using free speech to defend free speech's advocates as they attack the free speech of the "enemies" of free speech!
You do realize you're doing exactly the same thing by branding all of Anonymous as "the bad guys," right?Clipclop said:
The whole thing is pointless. Anonymous is a lot of different people with a lot of different aims. We can't even be sure most of those incidents were engineered or performed by the same people. You also make the mistake of confusing Anonymous on 4chan with Anonymous the hacker collective. There may be overlap, but they're not all the same people, and they certainly don't have the same goals. The only thing you do with this polarization is make yourself look naïve.
I read it, and responded to it, I think.Retosa said:
You're probably right. I remember there being a kind of perceived nobility to going after CoS, but sitting here and thinking about it, I suspect that came from the media coverage of them, and not from within.Retosa said:
In information that came out during the schism, it was always about a sub-faction within Anon that had actual control in the movement.Retosa said:
Anon prided itself on being a completely decentralized group, massive, amorphous, and, as a result, invincible. But, since Scientology that's proving to be simply not true. We'd been hearing rumors about ShadowAnons basically from the moment anyone cared about the movement, people who actually had control over the movement, as ridiculous as that may sound, and the schism last month finally gave us, not just a concrete structure, but a lot of insight as well.
Rather unsurprisingly there was always a core leadership structure, people who actually had control over the movement. They directed action in the IRC servers for the group as a whole, and while there were some false starts that occurred without their control, by in large they were responsible for the relative coherency of Anon's actions.
And while this would almost make sense, the fact of the matter is, Anonymous refers to an anonymous (keep track of capitalization here) group that maintained (until fairly recently) a relatively coherent pseudo ideology. This has changed since the schism, but still.Retosa said:
Anonymous published press releases through a server based out Russia. These are, by necessity, not the actions of a bunch of disorganized malcontents. This is the structure of a genuine organization, whatever they like to brand themselves as.
I tend to think of Anonymous as the internet Batman. He does things his own way and has his own line of justice, but in the end of Dark Knight, he was made out to be a criminal. I wonder, if it wasn't Anonymous that hacked Sony, I wonder if the real Anonymous could find these hackers and bring them to light so they can be arrested. I'm sure people would have a much more positive opinion of Anonymous if they did stuff like that.
BitCoins fit this definition. They aren't impossible to trace, but prohibitively difficult. They're already being used as the standard currency of an online black market site I won't mention by name here, but where people openly trade drugs and even have persistent user accounts and accumulate seller feedback.
*Frowns in confusion and rereads the article*Clipclop said:
I think you're being mislead somewhat by something else or your own bias, nowhere does he state that Anonymous are 'good guys'. He's talking about how the group functions and how they likely aren't responsible for the PSN attack.
Ultimately only mild observations can be made about them anyway, so I don't know why people would assume that they're inherently good or evil either way.