A lot of the actual, serious ones that knew what they were doing got caught. Some went to lulsec to be jerks with no agenda and were caught by the Feds. All that was left were script kiddies that downloaded the Low Orbit Ion Cannon and used scripts they find online. Then they left or were overtaken by alt right idiots.
The original Anonymous are in their 30s and 40s by now. Everyone ages out.
90s script kiddie here - a bunch of the shit you can do as a minor with low/no consequences becomes SERIOUS FUCKING BUSINESS as an adult with assets. It's just not worth the risk to keep dicking around with things that might land you in prison or cost you everything you have.
I think the serious ones that didn’t get caught are now working in red team penetration testing, which is an industry that’s been growing exponentially since the years Anonymous did a lot of their big stuff
IIRC it spammed websites with traffic, didn't conceal your IP at all, and some people got arrested for using it to make some websites go down for a very brief period. Basically a way to use people who didn't know what they were doing as cannon fodder
I actually teach teenagers programming and 3D modelling. The past 5 years has been the first decline in tech literacy I've ever experienced between generations. My personal theory is that only the gamers actually have computers at home now. Everyone else only use their smartphones, and that only gives a negligible increase in tech literacy compared to using a computer.
We've drastically simplified and made tech accessible to everyone with a smartphone, you no longer need computer skills to get on the internet to shop or participate in social activities. Kids use apps' platforms for the things we had to build and host ourselves 20y ago.
As a angry, nihilistic teenager: very fucking true. I am literally the only techy guy in my posh bullshit private international school (in Europe so affordable). The only other dude who uses Linux (I'm using that as a bare minimum for "techy") isn't into programming or reverse engineering shit even remotely. I'm all alone (apart from all my non-technical friends). I suppose that's where the nihilism comes from...
They fizzled out, members probably moved on to various other groups and projects, while the rest simply went on with their lives. A danger of being decentralized is losing all of your momentum.
Not gonna dig through their Twitter feed, but I saw someone a couple months ago ask them this exact question on one of their posts, and they wrote a pretty interesting response. They basically said, we're still here, trying to fuck the system up, but, with all the information we've provided and ported out there to the world, y'all haven't done dick with it. Laws haven't been passed, politicians haven't been ousted, corporations are still abusing the systems. So they were basically saying, what good is them leaking and hacking if the public doesn't take a more activist approach towards change themselves and hold the people they expose accountable.
Well if I knew how to take down sites and child porn site I totally would. Just don't know what to study and probably don't want to be another computer cracker using programs found online.
Hacking got harder, and the enforced penalties for getting caught became a lot more severe (in the west at least). This meant that most hackers aren't doing it for luls but for serious business.
all of the people who were part of Anonymous who were worth a damn at hacking back in the day work for the state department now. The movement could very likely have been a psyop, given how many high-level hackers from that era there are on government payroll.
Curious to know what answers you were looking for here OP. What makes you think they aren't doing these things but stopped identifying themselves as such? Also some dialogue is required about the myriad of things 'Anonymous' took responsibility for but were never adequately confirmed as objectively true--and more importantly, what is accomplished with this last feat? I believe the answer you seek lies in these depths
it's also important to keep in mind that the cybersecurity field has adbanced tremendously, with cloidfare, EDRs, and in general it is now way harder to do anything anonymously without getting caught, quickly. This also males the field of hacking way more difficult to get in, which combined with reduced attention span of younger generations probably means there's not that many bored teens willing to put the time in, and as an adult you have way much more to loose, so for hose who had the skills it would be a lot greater risk.
They (I use that term to mean the average 4channer) were co-opted by alt right propaganda.
Most neckbeard, incel, Andrew Tate followers are what Anon originally was. We just lied to ourselves that it wasn't really racist and that we were fighting a good fight.
Now, its a bunch of sad lonely people that found acceptance in intolerance and hatred.