""It's deeply unsurprising to see a cyber mob descend. There’s a very quick snowballing that happens, where it’s maybe one or two people, then all of a sudden people almost get permission from other people doing it," Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Maryland and author of Hate Crimes in Cyberspace, tells VICE. "It seems normal, and the mob moves to pretty strong extremes. It goes from like, ‘I hope you feel bad,’ to like, ‘Bitch, you should die.’ They see other people saying it and think it’s not so bad to say that, and it becomes somewhat like a game. But of course to the person being targeted, it’s not a game.""
The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School is a leader in the study of the law and policy around the Internet and other emerging technologies.