I don't see that as an internet thing, its about long distance control, or remote control. Its the same thing when people say its easy for politicians to send troops to war, or when a soldier controls a drone. They don't directly witness the outcome. The internet is just a more efficient, wider spread, easier to access example of it. Maybe also, its the same sort of thing as common folk committing minor insurance fraud. They don't see a victim.
Often wondered.... If a website were set up which had just one button one the page, and message saying the following: "After 10 million unique hits, a nuclear missile will be launched at a random capital city" Then lots of genuinely convincing stuff about it being about it being real, such that it was know to be for real. Also probably restrict it to adults, some how. (No, I don't quite know how, but this is a thought experiment after all.) How long would it take to hit the 10M? Would anyone really click?
Anyway, its clear to me that the more remote something is, the more people disassociate from it. The internet is just another example.
Web crawlers? People still figuring it's part of some game? Broken browsers? Nukerolling?
There is only one possible sane answer, and in this hypothetical it is quite pronounced - assume the Internet is full of malicious noise, and fully blame the person who hooked the missile up to a web page. Anything else is an exercise in responsibility laundering.
The noise doesn't even have to be composed of malicious people to be malicious itself; the potential bartier is very low here. In this case I can easily imagine one drunk /b/tard posting in on 4chan because "hey, it has nukes on it", and then someone else thinking "hey, it's on 4chan so it must be troll, lemme hook it up to my DDoS bot and see what happens".
Boom, gone a city of 30M, vanished in the flash of pure randomness.
Often wondered.... If a website were set up which had just one button one the page, and message saying the following: "After 10 million unique hits, a nuclear missile will be launched at a random capital city" Then lots of genuinely convincing stuff about it being about it being real, such that it was know to be for real. Also probably restrict it to adults, some how. (No, I don't quite know how, but this is a thought experiment after all.) How long would it take to hit the 10M? Would anyone really click?
Anyway, its clear to me that the more remote something is, the more people disassociate from it. The internet is just another example.