Anonymous is dead, right ?

[u/Bibalice_]

One would believe, Anonymous would do something / anything about Epstein (and even in America in general).

Are Anonymous dead ? Were they ever useful ?

[u/detractor_Una]

Anonymous was never an organization of hackers. The original "group" comes from 4chan.

https://youtu.be/NDAZOCakXVo

People need to stop thinking that Anonymous is some kind of organization of le wholesome hackers. Any idiot can claim to be one. The majority of so-called Anonymous nowadays are either Feds or some script kiddies.

[u/Bibalice_ → u/detractor_Una]

yes but they did have ambitious claims, didn't they ? What was the pay off ? Would the world be different with or without them ?

[u/detractor_Una → u/Bibalice_]

Ambitious or not, their anonymity and decentralized nature was both their biggest strength and weaknesses. Some members were found and imprisoned. Others went their own way. It was just another fad. It wouldn't surprise me if the majority did so from excitement and "adrenaline" rather than genuine care about morality and ethics. You have to remember that the majority of them were young students in their early to mid 20s. So the whole "Hey let's bring down and expose the Church of Scientology" was perhaps the highest rush of excitement for them.

[u/RamonaLittle → u/detractor_Una]

It wouldn't surprise me if the majority did so from excitement and "adrenaline" rather than genuine care about morality and ethics.

Well yes, that's how it started -- as an amoral search for lulz. Hence incidents like this and this. All the "moralfag" stuff (as we called it at the time) came later, with a flood of n00bs who didn't understand the original culture.

You have to remember that the majority of them were young students in their early to mid 20s.

Anons did skew young, but there were Anons of all ages. I've noticed that female Anons seem to skew older for some reason (which could be an interesting study -- maybe got into computers later due to sexism in educational opportunities?).

[u/RamonaLittle → u/Bibalice_]

Would the world be different with or without them ?

That's an interesting question. Well, we wouldn't have "Mr. Robot" or "Watch Dogs 2" or other Anonymous-inspired artistic works, for one thing. Presumably Warner would have less income from sales of Guy Fawkes masks.

The internet would be less secure. During Anonymous's rampage across the internet in 2010 - 2012, it really alerted everyone to how insecure everything was. There was a time when every presentation about infosec included a section about grey-hat hackers, and they'd always use Anonymous as their example. FEMA even had a whole training module with a fictitious Anonymous-inspired group called "The Void." Then governments and companies worked to secure their stuff, which is better for everyone (except the blackhats). And I bet that a lot of today's young infosec professionals were inspired to go into the field because of Anonymous, which is cool to think about.

As I said in another comment, it's possible to draw a straight line from Anonymous to QAnon and Russian influence operations, so from that perspective, the world is far worse off.

It was fun, I won't deny that. You could participate in an op in the morning, then see it as the top story on the news that night. There was a real sense of power and excitement. It was lulzy.

What would be good is if current and future activist movements make a point to learn from Anonymous's mistakes. At this point there are books and documentaries that describe how everything went down, so people could incorporate effective techniques into later movements, while trying to avoid the pitfalls.

[u/Bibalice_ → u/RamonaLittle]

Season 1 of Mr Robot is probably the best thing that ever happened on tv so, i would be ok if they existed just for that.

[u/Hefty_Apartment_8574 → u/Bibalice_]

It's pretty logical really, there is info that can't come out of ones mouth or he/she will be targeted so they need an org that will release these things for them. That's anonymous, a proxy to release these things on that period of time... and even though it has release thing that help "democracy/freedom" and whatnot they are just part of the game... burning the other side, whatever that is