Chinese Cyber Justice

Tom Downey profiles online vigilantes:

Human-flesh search engines renrou sousuo yinqing have become a Chinese phenomenon: they are a form of online vigilante justice in which Internet users hunt down and punish people who have attracted their wrath. The goal is to get the targets of a search fired from their jobs, shamed in front of their neighbors, run out of town. It’s crowd-sourced detective work, pursued online with offline results.