In the wake of the Paris attacks numerous social media avenues have come forward to respond and show support for the victims.
For instance, Skype allowed users to contact anyone in the world for free shortly following the attacks just so they could check on their friends. Airbnb also joined in support, contacting their clients to ask them if they could volunteer their rooms for free to look out for those that were stuck in Paris.
All of these acts of compassion happened apart from each other, which goes to show just how socially-conscious these tech startups are.
The popular hacker group Anonymous also went after ISIS, which has a very active social media presence. Because it’s so hard to differentiate between sympathizers and the actual members of ISIS, taking down social media pages isn’t so black and white.
And it’s interesting because governments aren’t doing anything about it. Bigger threats are facing the world, and countries are choosing to focus on those things instead of a hacker group that actually may be doing good despite their illegal actions. It turns out that Anonymous took down over 3000 accounts.
Because ISIS leverages social media to gain new members and post horrendous content, Anonymous couldn’t have picked a better place to hit them.
It’s encouraging to see how technology is being used to help victims of attack and also prevent further attacks from happening.
