Crowdwar post getting some traction
January 28th, 2008 by tom
Steve Hall over at AdRants picked up on my post about Anonymous and the anti-Scientology movement online, and this got picked up by Ian Schafer over at IanSchafer.com.
There’s a lot of interesting stuff coming out of this. I’ve gotten some interesting comments. Digg this morning pointed to a new Anonymous video press release. And the discussion continues. One thing I wanted to address was Ian’s comment from his post:
Free communication should never be limited — but we must thoroughly understand all methods of communication if we expect to be able to separate information from disinformation.
I’d argue that, despite all the misinformation it helps to perpetuate, an unrestricted Internet makes it easier to separate information from disinformation. The reason why this is goes hand in hand with all I’ve written about the Internet as Marketplace of Ideas on steroids. And I think the easiest way to understand it is to look at how a site like Snopes.com debunks common myths.
Snopes just happens to be a site with a particularly good reputation for debunking myths and confirming the questionable. Whenever someone starts a rumor about Bill Gates giving $1 to charity for every forwarded e-mail, Snopes spreads the word about it being bogus.
The truth of the matter, though, is that every Internet user can be a Snopes.com. The thing that is unique about the Internet is that it leaves tracks for others to follow. So, for instance, when there’s Scientology misinformation afoot, a single Internet user can construct arguments to debunk the disinformation. Social news sites and the like can help do the rest. The Marketplace of Ideas tends to be self-correcting, as those with the time and inclination refute or confirm individual facts (see Fisking) and leave tracks for others to follow (blog posts, comments, tweets, whatever).
Where things start to get hairy, IMHO, is when people or organizations who are losing the battle choose legal threats or other forms of censorship to undermine the facts. If I had to guess, I would say this is why Anonymous has an ‘all bets are off’ approach to taking out Scientology. Scientology is trying to operate outside the system as well as abuse it.
I continue to be fascinated by a couple things:
- The continued support from participants in social news aggregation sites. This goes well beyond the latest and greatest Internet meme.
- The notion of the distributed strategy. If Anonymous truly has no leadership, it coulda fooled me. It’s unbelievable how well-coordinated all the pieces are. You have people hacking, Digging, producing videos, participating in meatspace protests. That’s a lot of moving parts.
So yeah, I’m still watching this carefully.
Let me speak on behalf of Anonymous, if I may.
The DOS attacks were committed against the Church of Scientology to send a tremor through the media. They were never intended to silence the Church, or to suggest that we feel that they do not deserve their freedom of speech. I think it’s fairly obvious that their websites do more damage to them while they’re up, than while they’re down.
Our war will be a battle of information, and our goal will be to expose the general populace to the atrocities and crimes of the CoS.
http://www.scientology-lies.com/
http://www.whyaretheydead.net/
The media did turn it’s attention toward our movement, as you have also done. This was required in order to rally support/attention from non-anon entities, including the general public, to act as a foundation for what is yet to come.
It is easy to assume that those DOS attacks were the extent, or true nature of our action against the Church, but that would be false. We are not so stupid as to assume we can stop such an organization through petty bouts of internet disruption.
And I can assure you that no one is leading Anonymous. We formulate ideas independently and carry them out as a group. There are no ranks. There are no headquarters. There are no leaders.
We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
You’ve articulated very well what my thoughts on this have been for the last week, so I’ve commented on your post in my blog. I knew in the first couple of days that this was different. I think the general direction of my thinking over the past two years is what told me what was happening, so I was receptive to the idea. Act blue for example has heavily influenced my thughts.