Anti-War Hacktivism Is Leading to Digital Xenophobia and a More Hostile Internet

The use of terrible, horrifying, absurd makes this read less like a serious, considered policy position, and more of a rant. Rants can be cool, but this struck me as less nuanced than I'd have hoped coming from an important organization on a really significant topic.

>The trend of half-baked hacktivism involving everyday internet users is now growing into sites and games that encourage users to become part of DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks against some Russian digital assets. For the same reasons mentioned above, randomly sending attacks without thinking through the consequences and potential collateral damage are feel-good actions that amount to shooting in the dark. Also unknown are the consequences for users that were part of this campaign. Are users aware that they could have their IPs logged by a potentially aggressive and vindictive target? It’s an incredibly irresponsible action that gives tools to ordinary users without the due diligence it deserves, putting innocent lives at risk on all sides.

I agree. I can imagine a day where the public passes along links for fire to DDOS hackernews until silicon Valley puts more regulations against fake news, or children on social media, or some other issue. Vigilantism is always a bad idea, people get carried away and before you know it anyone can be a target because of a tenuous link to something considered bad. If the story about the tool overwriting files on Russian computers is true, then that just leads to another huge set of problems that can occur.

Pervasive monitoring, censorship, state sponsored disinformation and hacking also make a more hostile internet.

I think that we are legitimately at a point where people should just go into things assuming they are hostile and/or unsafe. I love EFF, but I think they operate under the assumption that bad actors are exceptions to the rule, which is pretty naïve in 2022.