Blog
Internet Gone Too Far?
The top post on Digg right now is out of control. It’s apparently video, which I will not watch, of a US solider in Iraq throwing a puppy off a cliff.
The submission suggests – correctly – that if this indeed true, the soldiers should be sanctioned in some way. Some of the top-rated comments in the post pull similar videos of US soldiers in Iraq, others ask why the outrage over one puppy instead of 200,000 civilians, etc. I don’t care about any of those.
What is extremely disturbing is the extent to which people are outright calling for this man’s murder – like a vigilante internet mob, sans torches. It should be noted that the man in the video gives his name and rank – for whatever reason. But the commenters are not just calling for murder – people combed the Internet and posted his profiles on social networks, his pictures, and pictures of his family members. One person posted his home address and phone number, another his car and license plate number.
It’s really unbelievable what the cloak of anonmity brings out in people – who in their day jobs would literally scream for murder? This video incident is sad, but the reaction is even worse. Come on, Internet.
These were announced a while back, but I finally got a chance to play with Digg’s widgets, which you can configure to display popular stories from the user-edited website. This would be a nice addition to website that covers a specific topic for which Digg has a category, like the 2008 election or the environment (or Xbox or 1337 haxors). Here’s a widget with the five most recently popular stories about the election:
Get blog updates via RSS
