The power of the internet has become painfully obvious to a number of Chinese citizens who have fallen victims to what officials call the 'human flesh search engine’.
The phenomenon sees hundreds of thousands of online users target an individual in order to track them down, sometimes in order to right an action the mob deem ‘wrong’ or simply because their image has gone viral.
When a witness spotted a taxi driver spitting on the elderly man on an Urumqi street, he or she noted the license plate and posted it online urging the 'human flesh search engine' to track the man down and make him pay.
