Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of law and computer science at Harvard, says that people seeking justice online fall into distinct groups. There are those “who think they’re the Bloodhound Gang and want to solve the case,” like the thousands on Reddit piecing together clues about the Boston Marathon bombings. And there are those who believe that “people aren’t taking things seriously, either because of corruption or because in the eyes of the vigilante they have a form of bias—‘They don’t care, because of their values, and we’re going to shame them into doing something about it.’ ”

The Internet is uniquely qualified as a venue for public shaming; it is a town square big enough to put all the world’s sinners in the stocks. Activists have gathered online to condemn advocates for abortion rights (and against them) in the United States, a cyber bully in British Columbia, a woman in South Korea who failed to curb her dog. In China, an army of vigilantes known as the “human flesh search engine” exposes corrupt politicians and cheating spouses. “By the time people have torches and pitchforks, the system has gone wrong,” Zittrain says. “But you do want a justice system that generates socially relevant outcomes. The reason we involve juries is that we want the community to be a piece of what’s going on.”

via Ariel Levy: Was Justice Served in Steubenville? : The New Yorker.