Anonymous’ Origin: 4chan

Anonymous originated on 4chan, an online image-based bulletin board. 4chan’s core demographic was male adolescents, which denoted the content as juvenile and contrarian to mainstream ideologies. The username “Anonymous” was automatically granted to all members (Dewey, 2014). This galvanized the notion of anonymity which would later define the hacktivist movement, which was pertinent to Anonymous.

Anonymous was devised on the message board “/b/”, an unmonitored message board pervaded with disparaging and uncensored themes. It was the sphere where toxic masculine culture could thrive without ramifications, given the anonymity. Therefore, this enabled problematic discourse as 4chandeveloped into a medium for trolling, harassment and bullying, depicting social taboos and consisting of homophobic and misogynistic content such as rape pornography (Haltiwanger, 2014). They transgress normalities while evading accountability. 4chan’s anarchistic nature and lack of user moderation remains pertinent to Anonymous’ structure.  

Although Anonymous’ efforts curtailed from that of 4chan, its members remain interspersed. Both deny affiliation and thus, its history and current subsets are incongruous with its contemporary motives. As a collective, Anonymous’ ideologies are pro-LGBTQ and anti-sexual harassment, negating principles of its those members constituting users of 4chan, who take no heed of political correctness.

Anonymous remains loosely coordinated and informal, yet, it has deviated from its primary purpose of entertainment and trolling relevant to 4chan. Web-message boards and Internet Relay Chats remain the primary medium through which Anonymous’ discussion is facilitated, which have yielded global-scale influence. While Anonymous’ ideologies and objectives are incompatible with 4chan, it would lose potency without chatrooms such as 4chan’s “/b/” forum to provide a forum for anonymous discussion for the hackers sustaining the collective.

Hacktivism’s Origins

Hacktivism is a form of vigilantism facilitated through online platforms. Its primary objective is to achieve social and political change, specifically, fight gov’t corruption, company wrongdoing, and expand state surveillance. The majority of its hacking focuses on overlooking the conduct of government and commercial institutions through illegal means.

Pioneer hackers emerged during the latter twentieth century, as members of “Cult of the Dead Cow” partook in the war on free speech.

It published the Hacktivismo Declaration, applying the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ free speech section, which states the following:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. (Cult of the Dead Cow, 2001).

Hacktivism emphasizes access to information as a fundamental human right, which state-sanctioned or corporate-mandated censorship impedes. Therefore, Anonymous’ principles are not unorthodox in the hacktivist field, yet, they are solely reinstated values of pioneer hacktivists.  

Cult of the Dead Cow’s website disclaims that their “site may contain explicit descriptions of or advocate one or more of the following:adultery, murder, morbid violence, bad grammar, deviant sexual conduct in violent contexts, or the consumption of alcohol and illegal drugs” (Cult of the Dead Cow, 1984). They exhibit similar social dynamics and material to other forums from which hacktivists originate, signifying a common hacker culture although not pertinent to Anonymous, applicable to its members.

Anonymous’ Subsets

The hacktivist persona corresponds to all individuals affiliated with Anonymous. Anonymous’ subsets, though, are do not uptake the tenets championed by the collective. Subsets such as LulzSec is characterized by cyber-mischief, rather than cyber-vigilantism which Anonymous self-identifies as (Oliveira, 2011). Therefore, given its informal nature, membership with loose collectives such as Anonymous does not entail ideological membership.

Distributed Denial of Services are the most common modes through which Anonymous and its sub-groups perpetrate their cyber-attacks, where hackers disable web-communications (Addley and Halliday, 2010). It involves the saturation of requests to the target’s website to bar it from coping with legitimate communication. Although both use the same method, their rationale varies, to achieve greater overarching values of free speech and hinder of corruption or simply for “Lulz”, hacker jargon which justifies cyber-attacks for “fun, laughter, or amusement derived at another's expense” (Oxford Dictionary).

The collective’s lack of hegemony and informal nature of its subsets undermines its ideals, diminishing its political actions although eighty-two per cent of Anonymous’ operations were politically motivated, advocating for greater transparency and the open circulation of information (Klein, 2015).

Project Chanology

Known for alleged financial corruption, indoctrination, and an extremist agenda, the Church of Scientology was scrutinized by Anonymous after attempting to censor a leaked propagandistic video of Tom Cruise praising Scientology as virtuous (Barkham, 2008). The church’s futile attempts to suppress the video heightened tensions between hacktivist groups as it entailed censorship.

It initiated Project Chanology, where members of image boards 711chan and 4chan galvanized condemnation of the church. Anonymous’ cyber-attacks were facilitated by Internet Relay Chats and therefore were not deemed important until the collective hacktivist community ordained it to be.

Anonymous was a channel through which users of informal forums banded and attempted to “expel [the church] from the internet” (Message to Scientology, 2008).

Although Anonymous’ attack on Scientology entailed confronting greater causes of free speech, aspects of conventional hacker culture remained, hence the statement, “[Scientology] should be destroyed, for the good of your followers, for the good of mankind, and for our own enjoyment[,]” indicating that the cyber-attacks were also for “Lulz” (Message to Scientology, 2008).

Operation Payback, Avenge Assange

Following online heists against commercial institutions, Anonymous subverted from “trolling culture” and began to uptake greater social causes and were labelled as key actors in the hacktivist realm.

Anonymous bears similarities with cyber-vigilante organizations involved in information breaching such as Wikileaks based on the method of acquiring information and ideological foundation. It is differentiated by its informal, loose structure.

Anonymous’ voiced its support for Wiki Leaks upon the conception of “Operation Payback”, where Anonymous disabled activities on mainstream international financial institutions, MasterCard, Paypal, and Visa who barred donations and denied service to Wikileaks and ceased association with Julian Assange, who they deemed criminal. Anonymous instated Distributed Denial of Service cyber-attacks upon commercial services, straining websites’ servers to impede legitimate service requests. It was a symbol of solidarity with fellow hacktivists and whistleblowers, thus demonstrating that Anonymous hacktivism, although loosely coordinated, constitutes a community with collective principles.

According to a spokesperson for the collective, “[Assange] is a content provider and publisher, not a criminal" (Halliday, 2012). Anonymous’ attack was an action against the penalization of free speech as its members championed the free flow of information with the objective of hindering company wrongdoing, corruption, and a prejudiced imposition of power in the corporate world.

Operation Ice ISIS

For terrorist organizations, the internet and social media platforms have emerged as tools for proliferating radicalism to the masses, pervasive to Anonymous’ use of the internet.

As a result, GhostSec, a branch of Anonymous, materialized, using hacktivism as an unconventional mode of counter-terrorist efforts. It was designated to disable ISIS’ religious extremist operations on the internet. Executing distributed denial-of-service attacks, Anonymous disabled 1500 accounts affiliated with ISIS (Saul, 2015). An account affiliated with Anonymous tweeted the following:

“Welcome to Operation Ice #ISIS, where #Anonymous will do it’s [sic] part in combating #ISIS’s influence in social media and shut them down.” (Cottee, 2015)

During the siege of ISIS, GhostSec digressed from Anonymous’ methods of operation, in efforts to legitimize itself (Brooking, 2015). GhostSec ceasing affiliation with Anonymous was a symbol of disintegration of the loose collective dynamic. Thus, Anonymous’ recent cyber-infiltrations denoted a loss of traction and heeding to more orderly, consolidated organization.

How has Anonymous retained its efficacy?

For Anonymous, the internet is a platform for discussion and an apparatus for change which has aided in the concealment of identity while simultaneously permitting active discussion and collaboration among dense networks of hackers dispersed across the globe. This allowed the group to remain well coordinated without needing the emergence of a dense network of personal ties amongst members. In the modern context, political and social activism is no longer a fixed affair, yet, it is fluid and perpetual policed by Anonymous.

In the era of globalization, the internet is the most efficient medium through which communication can be achieved and ideas broadcasted to monitor "transnational elite interests and power structures” (Underwood and Welser, 2011). Anonymous garners an advantage as its members have used their digital expertise to weaponize the internet.

Anonymous poses as a threat to the hegemonic state due to its lack thereof.The decision-making process is radically democratic, where the cyber-attacks are perpetrated upon consensus and collaboration. Anonymous’ prospers on collectivity and anonymity; which Internet Relay Chats provide a forum for.

Decentralization bolsters potency and resilience against oppositional forces. Since its members are globally dispersed, Anonymous’ operations cannot be halted, nor can the organization in its entirety be rebuked. Where one hacker is penalized, a new one emerges. Anonymous cannot be disabled due to its loose foundation. It augments resiliency against potential threats from those they are attacking and reduces dependence on a single figure, ensuring “there [are] no easy or obvious targets for retaliation” (Underwood and Wesler, 2011).

The internet is an instrument against oppressive entities both in the western and developing world. It attempts to impede governments both acting under the façade of democracy and those blatantly transgressing fundamental freedoms of free speech. According to a member of Anonymous, “[it] has power to bring down regimes” (Russia Today, 2014).

Anonymous’ Diminishing Hegemony

Having emerged as a collective of unnamed individuals, Anonymous’ decentralization proved effective as the people are able to voice their dissent, facilitate change and more easily evade legal or social ramifications. It accentuated for a democratic, non-hierarchical power structure and fluid dynamics, yet, it posed to be problematic for the organization’s continuity. As the internet permits the development of both legitimate and illegitimate sources.

As Anonymous gained traction, individuals used the collective’s brand to capitalize, prompting the emergence of digitized content claimed to have been published by Anonymous members. Content under “Anonymous Official” produces fear-mongering, conspiracy theories; antithetical to Anonymous’ objectives, which uses the internet as a means to the truth. Given the informal structure of Anonymous, there is no method of knowing who is the legitimate anonymous, which detracts from any potential credibility.

It enables the rise of populism and although it grants vast power to the people, it is disparately comprised of a predominantly young, male group. Thus, the unequal power structure remains. Public opinion facilitated through the internet is ill-reflective of the public and solely comprised of hackers promoting radical, libertarian sentiment, lacking in credibility.

Although anonymity allowed members to often evade legal ramifications, it eradicated credibility and corroded any revelations brought forth by the Anonymous. Any news brought forth by the Anonymous lacks transparency because there is no true, centralized source of information, but, multiple minor entities from which content stems. Anonymous’ history of anonymity has thus problematized a potential future of transparency.

The internet was a tool for addressing the masses, but, chiefly, remaining anonymous.  

It has also proved to be a tool for disabling the Anonymous.