[kictanet] Human-flesh search engines

[Grace Githaiga]

Listers, I found this article quite interesting. I must warn you though that it is long:). Read on.

Human-flesh search engines have become a Chinese phenomenon: they are a form of online vigilante justice in which Internet users hunt down and punish people who have attracted their wrath. 

The goal is to get the targets of a search fired from their jobs, shamed in front of their neighbors, run out of town. It’s crowd-sourced detective work, pursued online — with offline results.

...Human-flesh searches highlight what people are willing to fight for: the political issues, polarizing events and contested moral standards that are the fault lines of contemporary China.

...The focus on censorship also obscures the fact that the Web
is not just about free speech. As some human-flesh searches show, an
uncontrolled Internet can be menacing as well as liberating.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Human-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2& 		 	   		  
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