Honestly they seem like a lot of talk. Sure, they hack into people's accounts for justice but at the same time, what counts as "justice" is completely up to opinion so it makes these means somewhat questionable. This isn't to mention that they're not entirely honest through their operations.
It's like the KKK leak. They said they found proof of the KKK infiltrating the government in major government positions but their actual list seems to consist of mainly private citizens, some of which were already well known KKK members anyways.
In addition, in the leak only, they admitted that the number of KKK members was around 5,000 which makes their threat almost completely meaningless. To put this in perspective, an actual recognized threat to the United States – sovereign citizens – number around 300,000 members. Most major conventions have more people attend than the total members of the KKK in the United States. This really causes me the question the legitimacy of the threat as well as anonymous's intellectual honesty. If anything they proved that the KKK really is almost borderline irrelevant except in a very few select cases where a member owns or operates a business.
But the effect of that kind of misleading premise is pretty apparent. A lot of people, including websites reporting on it, are not sorting through that list and actually confirming that claim. Who wants to read a list to confirm its legitimacy outside of the most spergy of spergs? And I'm already seeing people claim "oh there isn't a list of Black Panthers because KKK people are everywhere" which doesn't add up to the evidence. Its fueling the political agenda though and is basically putting their opinion over their actual evidence.
Now there were a few interesting, worrisome people that they located, such as an owner of a transportation service or even a single FBI informant. Unfortunately though that doesn't follow the narrative of "they've infiltrated the government and media", instead it suggests some horrible people have managed to get some important positions. This happens literally all the time. This isn't to mention that the FBI informant was already in trouble with the government for his shenanigans, according to the doc.
See, the thing is – I definitely appreciate them going after the KKK. But what I don't appreciate is them inflating what they actually found. And ultimately, I don't agree with the fundemental philosophy behind the whole incident.
While I think we all agree the KKK is a malevolent community, the premise of trying to destroy the lives of people based on their political beliefs is highly exploitable. Society already condemns the KKK in most places in the US and people who are open about their membership are immediately ostracized from most communities. Is this really needed?
I used to idolize them back when I was younger but I was pretty jaded by the whole social justice thing and as I matured a bit I realized that I didn't really agree with everything they were doing. At this time I think they're a bunch of very arrogant people who have some power to try to turn other people off essentially. This will lead to problems down the line.
I think their public image is really draining though. A few years ago a lot of people were supporting anonymous's deeds but nowadays it seems almost like a joke.
