Wild West 2.0: How to Protect and Restore Your Online Reputation on the Untamed Social Frontier

spread a smear to thousands of viewers. Even if it is not targeted, it

can still do a lot of damage.

E-Mobbing

If one person can create a devastating personal attack, a crowd can do

much more. Creative attackers have found many ways to encourage

a crowd to do the attacker’s dirty work. Attackers have motivated

crowds by using social norms, politics, and appeals to the crowd’s

sense of mob justice. All too often, the crowd rushes to judgment, re-

gardless of the actual innocence or guilt of the condemned party. As

explained by one expert, “Collectives tend to be mean, to designate

official enemies, to be violent, and to discourage creative, rigorous

thought. . . . We might be genetically wired to be vulnerable to the

lure of the mob.”

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