A CHINESE FAMILY made global news this week as the parents of a 15-year-old boy were forced to apologise to the world for their teenager’s behaviour.

The young boy had etched his name into an artwork at an ancient Egyptian temple a few years ago, not knowing the importance of the relic or the eventual consequences of his actions.

When an image of the graffiti, which said ‘Ding Jinhao was here’, went viral, many were outraged at the lack of respect for an important piece of art.

It was shared up to 100,000 on Chinese micro-blogging site Weibo and a “human flesh search engine” was initiated.

It led us to look further into the fairly recent phenomenon and ask, what exactly is a human flesh search engine?

Peter Steiner/The New Yorker (1993)

Peter Steiner’s famous comic strip from 1993 (above) has been changed by Chinese web users to read, “On the Internet, everybody knows you’re a dog” and that’s largely down to the human flesh search engine.

Arriving in their first form in 2006, they were used to find obscure information and reveal internet identities. Often the goal was to get revenge and shame the perceived culprit through various means.

According to researcher Vincent Capone from the University of Massachussetts, who has a particular interest in the area, it is unique to the Chinese community of internet users, known as netizens. He describes the search as “comprising of thousands of forum, micro-blog and entertainments sites” to mobilise “the overwhelming number of Chinese internet users”.

The phrase, which can sound intimidating and dangerous, is directly translated as renrou sousou yinqing (人肉搜搜引擎 – thanks to The Atlantic for that translation).

Although the human search engine was first used to share information as part of attempts to find love and friendship, it soon moved away from such benign beginning. Now, the unending search for justice can be seen as unfair or disproportionate to the initial action in cases where people are looking for vindication or someone to blame. One man, an adulterous husband who became infamous in Beijing, had to go into hiding after the diary of his late wife was published. She had died by suicide and her sister had taken to the Internet to tell the world about alleged mistreatment during their marriage.

The majority, however, are established to bring about justice. This can take the form of uncovering the identity of a wrongdoer, getting someone dismissed from their employment, running them out of town or simply shaming them in public.

Cappone has a straight-forward explanation for how they work:

Comprised of thousands of blogs, microblogs, online forums, and Twitter-esque Chinese websites, the Human Flesh Search Engine is a phrase that encompasses the sheer power that the Chinese internet holds, a power that is shaped from the overwhelming number of internet netizens and their ability to use the internet as a means for research to uncover and spread various stories, as well as use the internet as a medium for releasing anger over social injustices that go unnoticed offline and by the Communist government.

The first human flesh search

As with most things online, the first of its kind involved a cat.

In 2006, a video of a middle-aged woman crushing a kitten with her high-heeled shoe was posted to a Chinese website. Web users set to work. According to the New York Times, the initial responses to the clip were about getting justice. “Find her and kick her to death like she did to the kitten,” wrote one. Soon though, people began to ask more practical questions and soon found out who she was.

Cappone says she was harrassed to the point the government got involved. She was a nurse and her “iron rice bowl” job (a label used to signify a secure job with a pension) was terminated. She also left the town she lived in.

The era of the online vigilante had arrived.

In 2010, a New York Times article reported that since 2006, searches were directed at cheating husbands, corrupt government officials, pornography makers, unpatriotic citizens, journalists who encourage a moderate stance on Tibet and rich people trying to play the system.

Can they do good?

Another famous human flesh search is often cited as one that provided justice in a case that would have otherwise seen an innocent woman jailed.

Deng Yujiao, a young woman from Hubei, was charged with murder. The pedicurist was accused of stabbing an official to death with a pedicure knife at a hotel.

She had killed him – that was true. But she had done it as he and two other officials attempted to rape her.

A citizen reporter called Wu Gan, who is also known as Butcher, got wind of the real story and prepared a blog post, knowing he would need many netizens to fire up a human flesh search engine.

Deng was eventually released without charge.

Wu Gan told The Atlantic:

The cultural significance of flesh searches is this: In an undemocratic country, the people have limited means to get information. Information about [the activities of] public power is not transparent and operates in a black box, [but] citizens can get access to information through the Internet, exposing lies and the truth. It is a kind of asymmetrical means of protest [畸形的抗争手段], and in some ways has had good effects.

Will they spread?

Cappone says the search is unique to China and, certainly, it is the only country where there is a name put on the concept (it is even used as a verb – to be human-flesh-searched is a phrase commonly used as a threat). But the recent bomb attacks on Boston during the city’s marathon showed there is some appetite for crowd-sourcing justice in other areas of the world.

It also revealed how dangerous such vigilantism can be.

Photos of a number of innocent people were published across the web (and on the front pages of some newspapers) as the search for the real culprits continued. Some were even forced to go public to profess their innocence.

US citizens may well be warned by the events of last April. They may also be reticent to take part in any populist revenge because of fears of lawsuits for defamation and breach of privacy.

In fact, the adulterous husband, mentioned earlier, looked for damages in his case. He won but only a small amount and it didn’t stop the vigilantes. One Netizen wrote: “To all employers: Never offer Wang Fei or Dong Fang jobs, otherwise Moppers will human-flesh-search-you.” (Moppers is the nickname given to users of the website Mop, which is often used in searches.)

In Taiwan, the practice has been given a legal status when it occurs in the “public interest”. And often in China, they are used to catch out corrupt government officials – and not every call for a search is answered.

But should there be a line? Has it gone too far when the name, school and birth date of a 15-year-old boy is made public in order to shame him for being, well, a teenager?

Read: A Chinese teenager etched his name onto an ancient Egyptian relic