

How 'Human Flesh Search' Is Changing China - nsns
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/what-is-a-human-flesh-search-and-how-is-it-changing-china/263258/

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stretchwithme
People in China, like everywhere else, want people held accountable for their
actions. If government won't do it, they will do it themselves if they can.

I read that people from the provinces experiencing an injustice can go to
Beijing to seek justice. But if too many people from a province do that, the
province gets in trouble. So the provinces actually send agents to Beijing to
kidnap their own people to keep them quiet.

There is no reliable system of courts and appeals and justices that will rule
against even the powerful when the cause is just. That simply encourages more
injustice.

I think this is China's biggest challenge. It won't change until the rights of
the individual are recognized.

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rabidsnail
It sounds like "Human Flesh Search" is just the Chinese word for Doxing.

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alexlawford
I've never heard of Doxing (and I read HN) while "Human Flesh Search" is a
commonly understood term amoung young people in China. That said, China
effectively has a single, unified internet culture, not the many sub-cultures
of the english-language internet.

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est
Human Flesh Search is just "人肉搜索" translated word by word, but literally it
just means Manual Search, in contrast with automatic search done by machines.

"人肉搜索" coveres a very wide range of topics from its root
<http://dzh.mop.com/renrou> (much like 4chan). E.g. Given the pic with part of
a boob and ask for who the celeb is, or some random pic with a nice dress and
ask where to buy it. Or you "人肉" the scammer on some Chinese craigslist sites.
So later it envolvs identifcation of corrupt official's expensive watch.
Theere's a karma-like system to keep the online community engaged.

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theevocater
It seems to be silly to think this is only a phenomena in China. In the West
we have 'doxing'.

That said, this sort of thing is what Internet activists always cite as being
what a free internet can do for the world. Citizens can hold their officials
accountable by combining their efforts to dig. It is much harder to arrest 10
people in somewhat geographically diverse regions than it is to find one
activist.

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long
Though, doxing seems to have a peculiar asymmetry. The doxee is revealed but
the doxers remain anonymous (in some cases, Anonymous).

It seems that Chinese "doxers" are more open about their own identities.

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theevocater
That is a very interesting thing especially considering that one would assume
that a western 'flesh searcher' would live in a country where political
dissent is not punishable by disappearing.

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veidr
One wouldn't assume that of the USA anymore, I'd think; the US government has
been disappearing people since 2001, not to mention killing US citizens with
drones who are alleged to have created and published propaganda (but not to
have committed direct violence).

So far, such incidents mostly relate to the USA's ongoing state of war, not
other kinds of "regular" corruption. However, as groups like Wikileaks and
Anonymous butt up against, e.g., the state department and the military
industrial complex, I think their members are wise to protect their
identities.

I think the difference might stem more from the fact that in the USA (and
pretty much all advanced Western democracies) we still have a lot more ability
to remain anonymous than do people in China.

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pyre
The origin of 'doxing' on 4chan was to do things like convince a female that
was 'attention-whoring' on the forum to do things like post nude photos of
herself. Some people would immediately try to figure out who she was, in some
cases they would do things like send the nude photos to work, school, and/or
family, in addition to telling everyone in the forum the name/address/etc of
the target.

In this sense, it makes sense for the dox'ers to want to remain anonymous.
You're convincing someone to do something, then turning it on them to attempt
to ruin their life.

So 'doxing' is more specifically about _destroying_ someone's anonymity (or
pseudo-anonymity if they maintain an alias), at least in it's origins.

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blahedo
For most of the article, I was wondering how the author could avoid using the
words "vigilante" or "vigilantism". It did show up near the end, in quotes,
sounding like a positive thing.

It _does_ sound from this article like flesh searches are for comparatively
noble causes; but as with any case where vigilante justice is glorified, I
have to wonder what proportion of the victims of vigilantism really "had it
coming". (To be fair, in a part of the world where rule of law is rather more
tenuous, I think there is somewhat more place for such things... but it's a
double-edged sword, and the back edge is _very_ sharp.)

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chris_wot
This is a natural outcome for a system that has a large number of people but
poor rule of law and arbitrary justice.

Fix the legal system and reduce the corruption and you will get a
corresponding decrease in "flesh searches".

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ddellacosta
I think that sums it up pretty well. The citizen reporter Wu Gan ("The
Butcher") who the author interviewed for the piece put it thusly:

 _"Some innocent people have been hurt, [and] personal privacy has not been
protected, especially when information is incorrect. This kind of thing only
happens in deformed countries. Because there's no rule of law or democracy,
the Internet becomes citizens' only means of redress," he wrote to me._

How closely this bears resemblance to what is called doxing here is up for
debate; but certainly there is a difference in political import between doxing
and this "human flesh search."

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edwinyzh
Didn't have time to read the entire story, but I'm a Chinese and I know that
story.

So for those of you who didn't know yet, I'd like to point out that, the
Internet is currently the only way for people in the "people's republic" to
voice publicly and (possibly) get heard and taken cared by the authority.

IIRC, years ago Kai-Fu Lee had a speech at Stanford (?) explained such
particular phenomenons (such as why Internet is the only trustworthy news
source in China).

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happypeter
HFS, I think it's like giving people the right to have guns, lots of potential
for bad things to happen, but still a step forward to democracy.

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HaloZero
I think this more a matter of how it's changing not just China but any modern
nation. If you have enough of the populace of the internet it's probably
happening there and people are gonna be more wary of what they post online.

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personlurking
This came out a few years back on NYT

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Human-t.html?_r...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Human-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)

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tbirdz
Human Flesh Search, aka distributed vigilantisim

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Sonblind
I've lived in China for many years and heard countless acts of injustice and
corruption through Weibo (Chinese Twitter). There are interesting code-names
that people use to keep their accounts from being deleted or blocked. Deng's
freedom was absolutely due to weibo preasure. Its all about face, and if it
can be covered up, face over rules justice. If it goes public, justice must be
given...for face. Unfortunately doxing success stories are the minority.

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TheAmazingIdiot
In other words, it's also what the denizens at 4Chan do (specifically /b/)
when they "Dox" someone.

