

Ask HN: What's up with all the 4chan love? - olalonde

It seems everyone is supporting Anonymous over there: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2189907. Let's get some facts straight about those guys:<p>1. They DDoSed PayPal, Swiss bank PostFinance, etc. Probably caused millions of dollars in damage.[1]<p>2. They illegaly hacked into a company's servers, stole and published confidential data.[2]<p>3. They are part of a community that mostly hosts child porn, pirated material, etc.[3]<p>I challenge anyone to give me a single reason (apart from the technical prowess) that would justify any sort of admiration... Seriously.<p>[1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/12/4chan-rushes-to-wikileaks-defense-forces-swiss-banking-site-offline.ars<p>[2] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/anonymous-to-security-firm-working-with-fbi-youve-angered-the-hive.ars<p>[3] http://boards.4chan.org/b/
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throwaway2134
I'm no 4chan expert, but I've been there (hasn't everyone?) and I've never
done anything with anonymous so I'm not really fully aware of their community
or what it entails, but I think I know enough to say what I'm going to say, if
that makes sense!

I take issue with the use of the word mostly in #3. In fact, I'd remove #3
entirely as it isn't really accurate at all. I've been to 4chan 100s of times,
and never once seen child porn or pirated material. I'm absolutely sure that
it goes on, and that its even happening right now, but without a doubt, it is
not most of the content on /b/

Second, 4chan isn't anonymous and anonymous isn't 4chan. Anonymous isn't even
a group, it doesn't have leaders, goals, consensus, or anything else as far as
I know. Anonymous is a very loose term and is taken on by diverse groups of
people, and individuals too, with rare ties to each other.

Because they're not really a group or an organization its really hard to love
or hate them, so I think a lot of times, the actions of "anonymous" get judged
on that particular story/event without taking into context a past or a future.
This, I believe, is why you're not seeing more people talking about what they
have done, there really isn't a "they" and the people responsible for one
thing may not even be related to another. Its partly their refusal to be
identified and grouped that gives them freedom to do whatever they want,
whether others think its good or bad. A lot of the things they do are pretty
illegal, but in my view personally not really very immoral.

The love for anonymous right now comes from them making a fool of a company
that in my opinion deserved it, by flexing the power of the individual in the
face of what many would consider to be an over-reaching state organization,
and by showing the world these things in a fun and light hearted way. What
"they" have done in the past, for me, doesn't really exist, because I don't
know "them" to be the same people that DDOS'ed paypal/swissbank/etc. (who also
deserved what they got IMO even though it wasn't legal)

~~~
noodle
making absolutely no judgment calls on any of the situations, there are
definitely a few cases of hasty generalization fallacy in the OP.

