Over at ZDNet, Techyum’s own Violet Blue offers the best explanation yet of what exactly is meant (or not meant) by Anonymous, 4Chan, Project Chanology, Operation Payback, and the many other terms being slung around by the media the last few days. Said slinging has clearly resulted in the dissemination of more confusing disinformation and misinformation than ever. It’s all part of her roundup and scorecard on the global attacks, including news on this weekend’s major hack by #Gnosis at Gawker Media, and the origins of Operation Payback, Anonymous, etc — as well as what this all has to do with the Church of Scientology.
Utterly at sea when it comes to the subculture, the mainstream media has been relying on Wikipedia for answers. Wikipedia’s users have been recurrently citing non-primary sources and attributing information of questionable merit to anonymous/Anonymous sources of questionable provenance. You’d think Wikipedia is exactly the kind of site most vulnerable to misinformation in this case, but in fact the sites citing it, and mangling Wikipedia’s already mangled information, seem to be spreading the confusion contagion.
It just underscores how clueless most media sources are with their infrastructure, despite relying on it for everything. And if the media is confused, imagine how puzzled the politicians must be…
As Violet points out:
It is not unlike watching your peepaw unsuccessfully try to distinguish his emails from his “FacePage.”
Well, the rest is poorly documented history. But we do know that the scorecard is riveting. Whether it’s Operation Payback, Anonymous, or any number of other activists – the targets comprise a list with names so big it almost looks like a farcical Hollywood creation.
[Link.]
The heart of her article is the “scorecard,” which rounds up some of the most prominent smackdowns on both sides:
I wanted to see the big-league damage – from original Operation Payback and first Anonymous campaigns to current pro-Wikileaks DDoS attacks.
[Link.]
It’s like watching a prize fight…wait, it is watching a prize fight.