Fight The Man: What GameStop's surge says about online mobs

It's a fable for our times: Small-time investors band together to take down greedy Wall Street hedge funds using the stock of a troubled video-game store.

But the revolt of online stock-traders suggests much more. The internet is shifting society’s balance of power in unanticipated ways. And the same tools that empower the little guy — allowing people to organize quickly and seemingly out of nowhere, troll powerful institutions and unleash chaos — can also give rise to extremist mobs waging harassment campaigns or the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

In the world of pseudonymous internet message boards, pranks-gone-wild and logic turned upside down amid a global pandemic, revolts come in all shapes, sizes and aims. Last week they gave us the Great GameStop Stock Uprising. Who knows what this week will bring.

One thing for sure: we’ll be seeing more of it. More and more of us have learned to game the system, whether for a noble cause or, as they say, “for the lulz.” If a meme of Bernie Sanders in mittens can distract us amid a presidential inauguration and a Reddit message board can send Wall Street big shots running in panic, perhaps some good can come out of this, too. Right?

“The internet can democratize access, upsetting power dynamics between the people and traditional institutions,” tweeted Tiffany C. Li, a law professor and tech attorney focusing on privacy and technology platform governance.

With GameStop, she added in an interview Friday, the goal was to upset the interests of a few large hedge funds.

“But in other places the goal can be more nefarious. Online spaces are being used to radicalize people toward extremism, to plan hate crimes and attacks," she said. “The internet isn’t really the villain or the hero."

Jason Wilkinson had dabbled...