Talk:Anonymous (hacker group)

Sourcing on Aubrey Cottle being a "founder"

I'm having trouble with sourcing on the infobox about him being a founder (assuming a collective can even have it), currently it links to an article on "Techtimes" which appears pretty badly written, in parts reading almost like autotranslated, by one "Jamie Pancho". It cites an article on The Atlantic, which says "When 4chan began cracking down on organizing raids, Anonymous migrated to Cottle’s copycat site, 420chan, which he’d created to discuss his principal interests: drugs and professional wrestling. And Cottle became the de facto leader of Anonymous, a role he relished. It was during this time, Cottle told me, that he codified a set of half-joking rules for the group that became known as the infamous “Rules of the Internet.” They included “3. We are Anonymous 4. Anonymous is legion 5. Anonymous never forgives.”

The only source of him being a "founder" then is himself, with the article contradictingly stating Anonymous was already established in 4chan before they migrated to 420chan.

A search for his name and Anonymous only returns these chained articles. A search for his alias Kirtaner and anonymous, fails to return any relevant result. For a Good article to make such bold claims with this poor sourcing is questionable at least. Loganmac (talk) 04:15, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Yeah I'm in agreement with you here, I don't think Cottle can be listed as the founder when he's the only one to say he is and it quite clearly states that it existed before hand anyway before joining 420chan. I think he should be removed from the infobox, if anything a bit can be included in the article itself about his claim to it but you can say it's confirmed he is. NZFC^(talk)(cont) 11:23, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Gregg Housh, who was considered the defacto resource on the early period of the group, confirmed Cottle was the founder on Twitter and the article in The Atlantic would have been above and beyond fact checked. There's also a deluge of press now covering these points. It's about to hit saturation point. People keep making the mistake of conflating Anonymous on 4chan with the hacker group proper. There is a lot of retconning in order, basically. 174.88.91.209 (talk) 12:03, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/founder-of-hacker-group-anonymous-reveals-his-ultimate-endgame-11604336926 https://www.thefocus.news/tech/aubrey-cottle/ https://www.9news.com.au/national/founder-of-anonymous-hacker-group-aubrey-cottle-says-taking-down-qanon-in-reddit-ama/f104e6d5-6f7b-4df2-a178-1821ce921376 174.88.91.209 (talk) 12:14, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

afaik 9news isn't a reliable source. I contacted the author of the Atlantic article and he explicitly said the founder claim isn't a statement of fact, just Aubrey's word (the wording on the article already states "Cottle told me"). Marketwatch and other are all basing their articles on The Atlantic story. The history of Anonymous as a collective is already properly sourced to existing in 2005 at least , while Cottle mentions he started "the beginnings" of it "in December 2006" in a previous AMA, where he fails to call himself a founder [1]

By then there had been multiple Habbo and Second Life raids as documented by VICE, Wired, here and here. The article on the Habbo raids has more sources on this, as well as the entry on Know Your Meme.

VICE says "by 2004, users of 4chan's /b/ message boards were collectively referring to themselves as "Anonymous" whenever they organized internet pranks (the name comes from 4chan users posting anonymously on the site, as you don't have to register for an account). It is unclear which was created first: their catchphrase poem—"we are Anonymous, we are Legion, we do not forgive, we do not forget, expect us"—or the black and white graphic of the headless man in the suit that became their logo.

Either way, both were in heavy circulation by 2005 whenever the collective came together to harass people, like teen girls who had turned down or cheated on a 4channer, MySpace users with cringe-worthy profile photos, or animal abusers. At this point, Anonymous was mostly for dicking around" Loganmac (talk) 13:56, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Seems to be a self serving claim without any real corroboration. We should remove it. - MrOllie (talk) 13:59, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

As someone who was around back then, there was a lot of confusing misreporting on the origin of the hacker group this article represents. Consider the timeline of anonymous article as your flashpoint, Aubrey was basically driving that. Gregg Housh’s statements backing him up are not insignificant whatsoever and are in essence the most solid confirmation here. Either way, his name has been present on this article for quite some time now and it is questionable that suddenly detractors have shown up after a clearly demonstrated vendetta on Reddit. 2605:8D80:669:3E37:ACAC:1CF1:BB66:70E0 (talk) 15:04, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

I would advise you to please assume WP:GOODFAITH, we can only go with what reliable sources say. Gregg Housh has already said he doesn't speak for Anonymous as a whole, with HuffPost saying he's a controversial figure for the group and that he doesn't speak for the entirety of it, a claim he repeated for an interview with CNN. In his book summary, he mentions "Anonymous features no distinct or recognized organization or leadership", a statement he repeated to Salon: “There is no leadership. There can’t be. That is the point of it all. That is why things like OpLastResort happen after all of these 'big arrests.' For those reasons it is absolutely ridiculous to say that Anon's leadership has been dismantled,” Housh appears to have been constantly reached for being one of the only publicly identified individuals in the early days. Loganmac (talk) 16:03, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Leader is not the same as founder. Housh has also publicly confirmed that he intentionally protected any information on Cottle’s involvement for his safety on Reddit and you can contact him via Twitter to confirm this. Yes, this is a lot of very confusing news, but it is verifiable. An earlier comment said they asked an article author about the claims, this is also before Housh publicly confirmed the veracity of it. I suggest reaching out to him. 2605:8D80:669:3E37:ACAC:1CF1:BB66:70E0 (talk) 16:19, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Our article was based on the Atlantic story, and the author has disavowed that claim. We're going to have to wait for some other reliable source to become available (if one does). We cannot base claims in our article on 'Go ask Housh about it' or 'check reddit'. MrOllie (talk) 16:23, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 24 November 2020

In the Operation Nigeria section, there is this sentence with four citations:

Anonymous even shutted down banks! [180] [181] [182] [183]

The grammar is poor, please change to something like:

"The websites of many banks were even compromised!" "Anonymous even successfully compromised the security of banks!" SonOfLain (talk) 19:21, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

 Done – Thjarkur (talk) 21:04, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Is this group related to the United Nations?

Does this "Anonymous (Group)" have any relation to the United Nations? The the photo of Anonymous (Group) has the leaves on the back of person with a question mark and it's similar to the United Nations. I think it's not great because it would be misleading and people may take their side in politics. If anyone knows on this matter, please kindly let me know. Chika Ishii (talk) 00:54, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Please kindly be informed that Anonymous is a group of criminals. Please make sure that you are not participating in/involved in their activities as a perpetrator. Please stay away from their activies and if you could find them, please kindly inform to the local police. It's information terrorism. Chika Ishii (talk) 00:55, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Can you do something about Myanmar military coup?

Today myanamar military is helped by China Tech team to block everything they want.They want to hide from killing many citizens not to know global.We need help from all.We dont have justice. #SaveMyanmar#RejectMilitaryCoup 65.18.117.15 (talk) 10:15, 10 February 2021 (UTC)Zac