Search Engine: The Face of Anonymous, February 7, 2008. There's a common phrase: 'we are doing it for the lulz.' We just happen to be a group of people on the Internet who need-just kind of an outlet to do as we wish, that we wouldn't be able to do in regular society.That's more or less the point of it. Since 2008, a frequent subject of disagreement within Anonymous is whether members should focus on pranking and entertainment or more serious (and, in some cases, political) activism. Anons were early supporters of the global Occupy movement and the Arab Spring.
Among those that do, opinions vary considerably." īroadly speaking, Anons oppose Internet censorship and control and the majority of their actions target governments, organizations, and corporations that they accuse of censorship. Gabriella Coleman writes of the group: "In some ways, it may be impossible to gauge the intent and motive of thousands of participants, many of who don't even bother to leave a trace of their thoughts, motivations, and reactions. A website associated with the group describes it as "an Internet gathering" with "a very loose and decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives". Internal dissent is also a regular feature of the group.
This is an Internet-based, non-extremist, socialist community movement that looks for answers to questions that are unanswered. Long-standing political question that has gone unanswered with often tragic consequences for social movements.
Beginning with Project Chanology in 2008-a series of protests, pranks, and hacks targeting the Church of Scientology-the Anonymous collective became increasingly associated with collaborative hacktivism on a number of issues internationally.
In its early form, the concept was adopted by a decentralized online community acting anonymously in a coordinated manner, usually toward a loosely self-agreed goal and primarily focused on entertainment (or lulz). Some anons also opt to mask their voices through voice changers or text-to-speech programs. Anonymous members (known as anons) can sometimes be distinguished in public by the wearing of Guy Fawkes masks in the style portrayed in the graphic novel and film V for Vendetta.
Anonymous is a decentralized international activist- and hacktivist collective and movement primarily known for its various cyberattacks against several governments, government institutions and government agencies, corporations and the Church of Scientology.Īnonymous originated in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan representing the concept of many online and offline community users simultaneously existing as an " anarchic", digitized " global brain" or " hivemind".