Ren Rou Sou Suo is Crowdsourcing Justice in Chinese

H+ has a fascinating article on the growing practice in China, and around the world, of online vigilantism or “ren rou sou suo” as it is called in China.

There is a new movement being fueled by emotions ranging from revulsion to rage pulsing through the veins of the internet. It’s a 21st century update to the old school lynch mobs. Thousands have joined in and believe it’s an efficient way to make criminals answer to the netizens. With three billion Internet users, attempts to hide will only add thrill to the chase. With all eyes fixed to computer screens, people all over the world watch in fascination as this force continues to define itself. It is called “ren rou sou suo”. The phrase is Chinese and can be translated directly as “human flesh hunting” or “human flesh search engine”. It simply means an Internet search that is being powered by people with retribution and people’s justice on their minds.

In China, the most common variety of this justice involves tracking down creators of deeply offensive videos and outing them to the public along with their addresses, phone numbers and employers along with a call to humilate the accused perpetrator.  This is certainly happening in the US, as well.

In addition, many are realizing how to mobilize potentially millions of internet users to a cause such as flooding a website with so many visitors that it is forced to shut down (DDoS) or using the limitations of online banking to cause the cost of payment to be higher than the payment by making large payments in hundreds of tiny increments. This is what one of the founders of The Pirate Bay has threatened to do if forced to pay fines – he will ask all of his supporters to each send in a $1 payment to the opposing council, forcing a massive workload along with endless banking fees to be shouldered by the opposing council.

Then there are flashmobs, online petitions and a host of other ways that ordinary citizens are using the power of crowds to rather startling effect.

Where this will lead is anyone’s guess, but there is a distinct breakdown of traditional paths and processes due to the global reach of the internet and I think this will lead mostly to positive outcomes.

But I’m a rather silly optomist.

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• Pirate Bay owners devise scheme to bankrupt law firm (guardian.co.uk)

Knewsroom’s Crowdsourced “Paper” Feels Oddly Familiar

Knewsroom, the crowdsourced online newsource has just launched in beta.

From their website:

“Knewsroom™ is a community-directed news publication where not only do you have a voice—you get paid to use it. “The Knews” gets published every morning, featuring the previous day’s top stories in Politics, Business, Technology, Design, Sports, and Entertainment.

What makes it in? The community decides.

The best part? 20% of every dollar we generate in advertising gets split with the people who make the Knews happen: writers, readers, evangelists…anyone looking to turn extra brainwidth into extra cash.”

If you want to learn more details on how it actually works go here.

I like the idea of Knewsroom but the results are pretty much what you’ll find on the frontpages of most of the major news sites.  Today has stories on Clinton’s toothless win in WV, Edwards support of Obama, death tolls from China and the Celtics win again at home.  Not exactly breaking any new ground here.

Kluster – A Crowdsourcing Experiment or Valid Business Model?

I continue to be both completely intrigued and a bit unsure about the recently launched site Kluster.  The site is a place for people to post all sorts of questions, problems, challenges or business proposals and to attract others to contribute to the solution for a predetermined compensation.

The site itself is fun to browse and seems to have a fair amount of community involvement.  Now comes word (via Mashable) that Kluster is launching a sort of newsletter…

“The site is a bit of a diversion from the typical online news site which is updated 24×7. Rather, Knewsroom will publish once daily, with users deciding on what stories make the cut. It’s sort of like the morning, dead-tree-paper version of The New York Times that your parent’s get, but online. It’s even broken down into 5 different sections (like Politics, Sports, Entertainment, etc.) with 5 stories in each.”

In addition to everyone voting on which stories will make the cut, users can submit their own stories, which, if used, will earn them $150.

My big question is whether or not this crowdsourcing approach will actually result in a unique newsletter.  There is certainly no limit of places to get your daily news and, in this case, you have to actually wait for it to be delivered – something that most netizens don’t put up with these days.

I’m certainly curious to see what the newsletter looks like but I fear it will just be a rehash of the days news – information I will have already consumed over the course of the day.

Crowdsourcing 10K

Really clever example of the power of crowdsourcing as ten thousand people collaborate on a “counterfeit” $10,000 bill. (via BoingBoing)

“Ten Thousand Cents” is a digital artwork that creates a representation of a $100 bill. Using a custom drawing tool, thousands of individuals working in isolation from one another painted a tiny part of the bill without knowledge of the overall task. Workers were paid one cent each via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk distributed labor tool. The total labor cost to create the bill, the artwork being created, and the reproductions available for purchase are all $100. The work is presented as a video piece with all 10,000 parts being drawn simultaneously. The project explores the circumstances we live in, a new and uncharted combination of digital labor markets, “crowdsourcing,” “virtual economies,” and digital reproduction.”

Neato bandito.

Power to the People

Those smart folks over at PSFK linked to a great article in the GuardianUK that looked at the rising trend of ARG’s and then asks:

“If ingenious games designers can inspire thousands of people to collaborate to solve a puzzle, could we do something similar to tackle global warming, keep communities safe, provide support for the elderly, help disaster victims, lend and borrow money, conduct political and policy debates, teach and learn, design and make physical products?”

As they point out in the article, some of these things are already happening.  Sites that support micro-lending are showing a ton of growth and this seems to be just the tip of the iceberg.  Kluster is another interesting example of a site calling on the power of the people. The ability of the internet to quickly and easily bring large groups into communication forums is just awesome.