<story><title>Life after an internet mob attack</title><url>https://pasquale.cool/internet-mob</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>BitwiseFool</author><text>The most disturbing and insidious sentiment of online mobs is claiming that the targets are &amp;quot;just being held accountable&amp;quot;. Or that such people are just experiencing &amp;quot;consequences&amp;quot;. I really can&amp;#x27;t express just how cold and bloodthirsty such statements seem to be. It&amp;#x27;s the perfect combination of justifying vicious behavior while also absolving themselves of responsibility.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Syonyk</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;It&amp;#x27;s the perfect combination of justifying vicious behavior while also absolving themselves of responsibility.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;And Twitter&amp;#x2F;Facebook&amp;#x2F;YouTube just grin, raking in the advertising dollars from &amp;quot;engagement.&amp;quot;  The more people &amp;quot;engaged&amp;quot; in the activity, the better!&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think the concept of social media is fundamentally evil.  It&amp;#x27;s dangerous, certainly, but I don&amp;#x27;t think the core concept &lt;i&gt;must&lt;/i&gt; be evil.&lt;p&gt;Public &amp;quot;social media companies,&amp;quot; driven to improve revenue from injecting advertising into streams consisting of repackaging other people&amp;#x27;s content?  Those seem to reliably turn evil.</text></comment>
<story><title>Life after an internet mob attack</title><url>https://pasquale.cool/internet-mob</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>BitwiseFool</author><text>The most disturbing and insidious sentiment of online mobs is claiming that the targets are &amp;quot;just being held accountable&amp;quot;. Or that such people are just experiencing &amp;quot;consequences&amp;quot;. I really can&amp;#x27;t express just how cold and bloodthirsty such statements seem to be. It&amp;#x27;s the perfect combination of justifying vicious behavior while also absolving themselves of responsibility.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>philwelch</author><text>Whenever the talk of “consequences” starts, I’m reminded of a quote:&lt;p&gt;“There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.” —Idi Amin</text></comment>