Is the Internet a Mob Without Consequence?; New York Times, 12/24/13

Nick Bilton, New York Times; Is the Internet a Mob Without Consequence? : "Ms. Sacco was tried and judged guilty in a public square of millions and soon attacked in a way that seemed worse than her original statement. Within hours, people threatened to rape, shoot, kill and torture her. The mob found her Facebook and Instagram accounts and began threatening the same perils on photos she had posted of friends and family. Not satisfied, people began threatening her family directly. The incident was a trending topic on Twitter and a huge forum thread on Reddit. This all happened while Ms. Sacco was on a 12-hour flight without Wi-Fi to Africa. When she landed, it was game over. She deleted her entire social footprint online, including her Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, and was fired from her job, effective 12 hours earlier. “This default to hate, this automatic mockery and derision, needs to be viewed with the same hatred as Sacco’s tweet,” wrote Tauriq Moosa, a tutor in ethics, bioethics and critical thinking at the University of Cape Town, South Africa."