The Most Dangerous People on the Internet This Decade

When this decade began, the ideal of the internet as a freewheeling intellectual playground remained largely intact: A medium that, after years of bubbly anticipation, had finally reached the mainstream and fulfilled its hype, bringing with it online marketplaces with infinite selection, viral videos, long-lost friends on Facebook, and even the hopes for new forms of protest and dissent against authoritarian regimes. The internet was less dangerous than it was disruptive, and that disruption, for most of us, held exciting possibilities.

It didn't last. Today, authoritarian governments have turned the internet to their own purposes in the form of propaganda, disinformation, and cyberwar. Extremists have coopted and corrupted social media to spread hatred and advocate violence. Startups that once seemed like innovative underdogs now loom over the economy as vast, unaccountable monopolies. The dangers of the physical world have seeped into the online one—along with a few new, inherently digital dangers that threaten foundations of modern society as basic as our democracies and critical infrastructure.

For years, WIRED has assembled a list of the most dangerous people on the internet. In some cases these figures represent dangers not so much to public safety, but to the status quo. We've also highlighted actual despots, terrorists, and saboteurs who pose a serious threat to lives around the world. As the decade comes to a close, here's our list of the people we believe best characterize the dangers that emerged from the online world in the last 10 years—many of whom show no signs of becoming any less dangerous in the decade to come.