[1] Internet vigilantism originated in the early 2000s and has since evolved to include a variety of methods such as hacking, baiting, and public shaming.
Associate professor in sociology Benjamin Loveluck identifies the four main forms of internet vigilantism as: flagging, investigation, hounding, and organized denunciation.
Also referred to by Steve Man as Sousveillance, meaning "to watch from below", internet vigilantism can work as a type of peer surveillance.
[2] Augustė Dementavičienė defines the phenomena through the concept of Swarms, which are "Short term relationships between consumers formed for the purpose of achieving a goal".
[4] Cyberbullying often involves publishing of private information to publicly humiliate the target, but is typically driven by the bully's ability to get away with harassment, rather than a desire for social change.
[10] In 2019, the Kentucky Senate proposed a bill to ban the doxxing of children after a teenager, Nick Sandmann and a Native American activist, Nathan Phillips were filmed in a confrontation at a protest rally which went viral.
[11] Sandmann's father claimed his son endured "The most sensational Twitter attack on a minor child in the history of the Internet.
[10] DoS and DDoS attacks, a form of information entropy, involve a widespread effort to make a website inaccessible to legitimate users.
[clarification needed][6] In 2002 in the United States, Representative Howard Berman proposed the Peer to Peer Piracy Prevention Act, which would have protected copyright holders from liability for taking measures to prevent the distribution, reproduction or display of their copyrighted works on peer-to-peer computer networks.
It gained traction as a widespread social phenomena in China, where it has been used as a method of exposing government corruption and utilizing civic engagement.
The popularity of these activities arose due to the Human flesh search engine, which enables the conduction of cyber manhunts.
Surveillance videos from the restaurant in which the assault took place were released on the Internet to expose the official, as he had previously claimed his government position would protect him from incurring any punishment.
Silva, "Vigilantes' responses to perceived malicious activity have reportedly caused the loss of digital evidence, thereby obstructing law enforcement's effort in ascertaining attribution and jurisdiction over cybercrime offences.
[21] The Russian youth group Nashi, who conducted a vigilante project called StopXam, had been publicly supported by Vladimir Putin, who had posed for a picture with them.