This is the most dangerous use of technology these days: Incrimination. I've been campaigning to have this site shut down in various places. All it takes is incorrect information, a bad photo or a grudge and the world comes down for an innocent person. On the hand of the guilty people, it shows nothing of what they have done, merely a snapshot in time. Also, if the database is hacked or leaked in any way, a lot of pe…
This goes a bit beyond the purpose of the website but is in context of what you wrote about incrimination and vigilantes: It is amazing how quickly and effortlessly the otherwise so liberal and typically indifferent average internet user will turn into a zealous vigilante from behind their keyboard - I remember countless instances of that on reddit and 4chan basically calling for a lynch mob on people who tortured an…
"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana
I worry less about the rioters than I do about the general population calling for lynching and murder.