For some reason, /b/ seems to be the most interesting to the media outlets -- this lets them talk about Anonymous, hacking, lolcats, and other things that the media seems to like, without having to explain difficult things, like what "Dungeons and Dragons" or "Yaoi" or "Touhou" are.
Perhaps this is for the best, lest the rest of the site be overrun by the "Eternal September" that hit /b/ years ago. There's some surprisingly good communities left, with topics ranging from 3D modeling to tabletop gaming.
Good point, and they should've at least mentioned the other boards, but this article was written for Vanity Fair not Wired. They know their demographic probably can't or won't differentiate - it's all on the same site.
Then again, maybe I'm wrong, and Anonymous means something a lot different than I thought it does.
I'm convinced now that Anonymous is down to a small group of people who are basically really clever botnet herders. LOIC itself is a clever way to get a large botnet with fairly little effort. Since they operate under a guise of religious zeal and fervor, they largely get positive attention from the media for doing something that all Internet operators hate. As such, they're a pretty big threat to the operations community, and they're just discovering how to wield that power. The media eats it up because it's a story that sells itself.
When is the last time Anonymous actually picketed something to take their message public? Now their modus operandi seems to be to basically be that group of script kiddies that everyone hates, and punish groups they disagree with by hitting them with over 9,000 cable modems. That isn't to say that wasn't a part of Chanology, but I felt like the picket lines had a more positive effect than shutting down Scientology's Web site.
It's been a pretty sad transformation to watch.
considering what anonymous stands for, I think it is safe to say that anybody claiming to be part of the group while participating in a live on-air discussion on a news network, is not from the group and definitely doesn't understand it.
I remember years ago someone warned against a company angering the internet. I laughed. What is the net going to do? Spam email them? Shut down their network documentation? BFD. Anonymous is like in the matrix where Agent Smith managed to escape the virtual world and could affect things in the real world. That is power and that is potential.
Well, that's simultaneously the benefit and the drawback. Nightly News ran an exclusive the other night that interviewed some chain smoker who whored it up as well, and the piece highlighted Anonymous's accomplishments of taking down VISA and MasterCard. That's what Nightly News indicated that they were known for. I don't even recall if they mentioned Scientology, and if they did, it was in passing.
Regardless of what Anonymous can be, the media has latched on to the "computer hacking," and that's what Anonymous is now to every non-informed person who gets their information from press. A bunch of basement computer nerds, triumphing over old money establishment with all the suspense of a Grisham novel; that made a lot more headway in the international media than Project Chanology ever did, because it's a more interesting story.
The important part is that Anonymous isn't making strides to fix it: they're learning where the reward is, and all of the recent operations have lingered in that area -- countless SQL injections and DDoS attacks later, any possible positive outcome for Anonymous has long been overshadowed by the destructive. Even if, as you say, all of the destructive ops have been the work of a group that's genuinely out of touch with what Anonymous should be, the inherent drawback to anonymity itself means that their tactic has won the fight.
My questions are (i) Why don't magazines like VF put someone more technically knowledgeable to cover stories like these or (ii) if they're not going to bother with (i) , why even cover the story?
In this regard, the New Yorker is much better, I think. They either don't jump on the wannabe bandwagon for the latest tech meme or if they decide to do it, do a good job.
The middle third or so is good--they talked to moot, and give a pretty good description of at least some of the content--but then that's bracketed with the standard "Anonymous is Legion" story about Scientology protests and Wikileaks DDoSes, with media whore Gregg Housh being literally the beginning and end of the article.
It's frustrating to feel that there is something genuinely interesting going on there (and a dozen other places on the web with just the right conditions) but find that attention only ever seems to be directed at the shadows cast on the wall.
Edit: In case you're wondering, in that photo Chris is working on Canvas via Skype chat.
Wow, that's a bit misleading. The only way you to "steal" a website is to copy all the files then delete them, maybe. A DoS might "steal service", but that's about it.
What's wrong with "On one hand, web sites can be like stores, and taking them down is obstructing commerce, in a way." ? Are people not capable of handling nuance and ambiguity? Must everything be forced into "theft"?
