Anony Anonymous Ethical Issues

The possibility that Anonymous is actually hindering the efforts of the war on ISIS is also present. Firstly, many in Anonymous refuse to work with western governments, like the United States, because as they are combatting ISIS, they are also combatting many actions western governments commit. As there are many sects within Anonymous, however, there are some which work directly with the United States government. One of these groups, Ghost Security Group (or GhostSec) has continually infiltrated online forums and communication networks of ISIS to provide the United States government with information (Schatz, 2015). They have also claimed personal responsibility for taking down over “149 ISIS-affiliated websites, 110,000 social-media feeds, and 6,000 videos since January [2015]” (Schatz, 2015). Infiltrating forums and taking down websites is no small feat—the internet is too integral of a communication system for these acts to be considered small. The “small dent” argument is almost ridiculous; how much are average citizens really expected to contribute? Anonymous’ efforts are more than sufficient because they do anything at all. Law enforcement agencies and governments are also working against ISIS. This allows the theory
The problem with this argument is that each time a new account is created, new followers must be obtained as the count will be reset. Taking down the major accounts limits the ability for the word to get out on these accounts as well. As long as accounts with high amounts of followers and fans are repeatedly taken out, the spread through social media will decline. ISIS can circumvent this by creating hashtags, but even then, the hashtags can be “hijacked” by good Samaritans, and content can be placed which is not related to ISIS at