In the past few weeks, I have discovered a website called reddit.  I had heard of it before, and known of its reputation as “the frontage of the internet”, but I did not have enough interest to actually check out the site until its came time to study for my semester finals (and as anyone who has been through school understands,  most of the time you spend “studying” is actually spent doing anything but studying).  Anyway, I checked out the site, and I was amazed by what I found.  Reddit is a site devoted to discussion of… everything.

The front page is a list of the most recently popular threads, discussing news articles, politics, funny cat pictures, and more.  If your interests are more specific, there are “subreddits” for just about anything, from /atheism and /christianity to /movies and /books to /askscience.  Within each thread, redditors discuss the topic, providing a sometimes sobering revelation on what previously seemed to be an incredible discovery, or sometimes the exact opposite, a discussion on why something which sounds minor is actually a major  piece of news.

In my introduction post to this series, I described a group I then called the Posters.  That was a pathetic attempt to put a name to the group which is the most easily seen and traced across the internet.  A much more apt description of this subculture would be “Socialites”, because this group thrives on discussion and debate.  The major character trait of Internet Socialites is skepticism.  Every time a piece of major news is released, within a half hour there is a post discussing the validity and overreaching meaning of the news.  Nothing is taken for face value.  After all, it is amazingly simple to photoshop a picture so it looks like it was taken at the exact moment a man tripped over a ledge, or write a news article slanted to make a specific group sound like the bad guys.  Because of this, everything on the Internet is “disbelieved until proven true”.

But if the Socialites disbelieve everything they see on the Internet, how can any of them trust each other to give true information?  After all, all of them hide their identities behind usernames, and there is no safeguard against one person creating multiple identities.  As it turns out, this anonymity removes more problems of validity than it creates.  Socialites cannot possibly argue from authority, depending on the rest of the community to simply trust they are correct.  They must instead explain their opinions fully in every post they make, and even then any other person has the ability to point out faults in their argument, which the OP (Original Poster) then must respond to in order to preserve his validity.  This instant feedback is perhaps the most useful tool of the Socialites.

I like to imagine what the world would be like if all of academia was presented in this way.  Currently, a researcher submits his or her research to peer review, and revises multiple times before publishing a “completed” article or work.  But this takes a large amount of time, and how completed is it?  Without a doubt, there is some detail or implication which has been overlooked by the researcher and his peers, or a some discovery in a different field which could effect the publication.  And if it’s still faulty, what can be done about it?  The current system of academic publication worked during a time when it was impossible to get instant feedback from all around the world, but today, a researcher could post his raw data on reddit, for example, and instantly have hundreds of other people analyzing it and discovering trends which would have taken the researcher months to do himself.

I believe the only thing holding academia back from making this step to instantaneous feedback is the fact that it would remove the ability for the original researcher to get all the credit.  The Socialites have no problem with staying anonymous, and as a result, they create a hugely dynamic arena of debate which could eventually prove itself as an example for the rest of the world.

It is difficult addressing the culture of the Covert without calling up images from popular culture.  Anonymous, by far the most well-known of the hacktivists, is probably the first image that comes to many people’s heads, followed closely by the recent articles concerning the crackdown on child pornography.  Not surprisingly, many businesses and governments despise the covert, because their actions cannot be regulated.  As a result, it is difficult to find a place where they are portrayed in a positive light, without using radical resources.  Both there and “official” articles about them are biased accounts, highlighting a particular aspect of the culture.  To evaluate the entire culture would require admitting that, as an unregulated media, it is simultaneously the most useful and the most dangerous part of the internet.

There are many different names for the habitat of the Covert – the Darknet, the Deepnet, the Dark Fiber, the onion network – and each word has a slightly different definition.  The specifics of each of these do not matter much to me, at least for the moment.  In general, the Covert communicate with each other and share files secretly, making use of programs like those that hackers use to conceal their identities.  In fact, to be able to assure their security, many of them are programmers and hackers.

This entire topic is the source of a great amount of political debate.  In fact, CISPA, a legislation similar to (and as many claim, more dangerous to the online world than)  SOPA, is being voted on this week, and if it passes the Covert will be more vilified than ever.  These multiple attempts to put a legal censor on internet communication in America has fairly recently become prevalent, in response to the internet’s involvement in such movements as the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street.

The Covert are the people who organized these events, who communicated with each other to organize revolution at the risk of being prosecuted by the powers they were protesting.  The Covert are shielded from their identity, and therefore have the freedom to speak their mind, to tell others about the oppression they have faced.  The Covert are the instigators of political change.  There are Covert in China, publishing posts and communications against the censors of their government, which would most likely execute them if they were caught.

I personally have never been to the Darknet, because I do not fully understand the legal consequences of it, but I have heard accounts of people who have.  The Darknet can generally be divided into two groups: the illegal and the anti legal.  The illegal include the child pornography websites, the black market sites people can visit to order drugs or prostitutes.  The anti legal include the protesters in oppressed countries, those who are crying out for freedoms the only way they safely can.  Who knows, America could eventually become one of those oppressed countries, if and when CISPA and the further restricting legislation which will surely follow is passed.  To pass legislation enabling the governments to fight the illegal will also empower them to silence the anti legals.

The bright side is that silencing the Covert is like taping a screen to prevent air from coming in.  No matter how much tape you put on, the air will always find its want through the screens.  It will just be more difficult for a time, until they adapt.

I have decided to begin a series of posts detailing some of the major subcultures of the Internet.  Many of them overlap, as the Internet is a place without any actual borders, but each subculture has its own behaviors and distinct set of rules.  In addition, as each subculture depends on the Internet for their existence, each one is threatened equally by any sort of attempt to control the Internet.  However, their responses to a threat differ greatly.

This post is an introduction to some of the groups I will discuss, although most likely there will be more than just these few.

 

Gamers:  Gamers are, obviously, the people who use the Internet and computers primarily for games.  Examples of gaming communities include Steam and the “gaming” subreddit.  This group is the most reluctant to address the threats to the freedom of the internet, and will not unless their gaming life is directly threatened.

Programmers:  Closely related to Gamers and Hackers, Programmers include those who create games, operating systems, and other programs.  Programmers are the most knowledgeable of the internet and how it works, along with Hackers, but their efforts are mostly focused on creation, while Hackers focus on infiltration and modification of programs.  The welfare of Programmers is at greatest risk if the Internet is threatened, because a restriction on the freedom of the Internet restricts their capabilities and could affect their career.  Programmers and Hackers are the first to recognize a threat to the Internet, and can understand the full implications of the threat.

Hackers:  The group most stereotypically seen as a danger to the IRL (In Real Life) world.  This group includes online political activist groups such as Anonymous, as well as the other, less well-known groups which work in secrecy.  Hackers focus on working around the rules of the Internet, searching for loopholes or opportunities for profit, which they then take advantage of.  Hackers are the most active in response to a threat to the Internet, taking action by fighting back online.

The Covert:  The actual greatest danger to the IRL world, this group contains the users who browse the Internet using secure, untraceable connections, using the Darknet and networks such as TOR to explore sites which are not reachable by google or other search engines.  A number of these sites contain illegal content, such as child pornography.  There can also be found websites where one can purchase illegal goods, such as drugs or pirated media.  The users of the Darknet are the most difficult to stereotype, because of the security and anonymity they surround themselves with.  Their response to a threat to the Internet is usually either in secret or through the actual identities of these users, usually in another subculture.

Posters: The most interdependent of the groups, Posters use boards such as reddit, tumblr, and blogs to create discussions and communities.  This group is the most prolific, as an enormous amount of information is posted every day, and as a result the most difficult to keep up with.  Posters usually specialize to a specific messageboard or forum.  Posters work with Trolls to initiate a discussion of any threat to the Internet, allowing other Users to be educated about the threat.

Trolls: This group is identified as the users who trick other users or purposefully annoy them.  Creations of this group include the Rick-roll, the “trollface”, and prank websites.  Although his group is often despised because of its disruption of organization, it is nevertheless a great influence on the Internet as a whole.  Trolls would respond to a threat to the Internet by reverse psychology, acting like a radical supporter of the threat and inciting argument by posting as the “devil’s advocate”, letting the Posters create a discussion of the threat and the way to oppose it.

The Passives: The group most often overlooked, this is perhaps the largest and potentially the most powerful group.  Every other group depends on this group, the masses of casual Internet users, to use the internet and “vote” with their views on a page.  In the case of a threat, the goal is to “mobilize” the Passives and create a mob which has the power of numbers to eradicate the threat.