Internet Justice (Jonathan Castella's Blog Post #1)

 In the first chapter of his book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, Clay Shirky recounts the story of a lost Sidekick cell phone. In this story a woman, Ivanna, loses her phone in a cab and it’s found by a 16 year old girl, Sasha, who refuses to return the phone. Eventually, with the help of the internet's outcry,  Sasha is arrested and the phone is returned to Ivanna. Charges were never pressed on Sasha, but in the eyes of the internet, justice is served.

This form of “Internet Justice” has always fascinated me and it is quite common especially in places like Reddit and 4Chan. Whether or not this form of “justice” is actually just, is almost completely inconsequential to the unnuanced mind of the internet. For this reason when I use the term “Internet Justice” this comes with zero moral judgment of any of the parties involved in these  sorts of scenarios. Many of the users of these two aforementioned social media sites are obsessed with delivering justice to perceived wrong doing. It's a kind of behavior that can only truly exist on the web.

One such example of this was in 2013 when 4Chan users tracked down a Vine user after posting a video of himself abusing his cat. 4Chan users found the video maker's name, Walter,  as well as his personal information and released it all to the public. These users would continue to harass Walter and put pressure on local animal rights groups as well as the police until they managed to get him arrested. Revenge stories like this are far from rare on the internet, especially in our modern day when so much of our information is accessible online. I am sure we have all heard stories of someone, somewhere, losing their job over a TikTok they may not have even posted. The internet creates a space for this kind of behavior whether or not we think it's justified. In many cases we may feel that social consequences have become much greater thanks to the power of the internet and its users seeking "Internet Justice.”      

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