Raiding

"Raiding" is a term used online, where dozens of users (or possibly hackers) storm a website, and end up destroying/taking over parts of it, usually via protests or spamming.

A secondary form of raiding, called "vote brigading", is where users storm review sites to vote down or vote up a subject to get it on the top of the list or make some form of protest.

Examples

 * 1) Roblox's website was raided to the point where the site was temporarily shut-down, and in response the admins went corrupt and started undergoing two yearly-long and later thirteen year long forum restrictions to new users. This later was removed and replaced with captcha a few months later.
 * 2) *The same raider, known as QuackityHQ, later went on to raid many games, commanding players to make a character and then flood Twitter and the game with a hashtag. For example, the #BoycottHabbo hashtag skyrocketed to 30k+ during his raid.
 * 3) Toontown Online's servers were flooded with bots that were just green cats standing around doing nothing in 2011. This was allegedly done as protest to Disney failing to patch the Toontown Injector python exploit that plagued Toontown in 2010. The code however, was leaked and eventually the exploit was fixed, though.
 * 4) Google Plus had people raiding communites via either spamming or a hacker getting in and kicking everyone else putting up messages that the site is "raided".
 * 5) Amino Apps communities are well raided every day.
 * 6) YouTube was raided in 2009 by 4chan users to spam inappropriate videos. This incident was nicknamed "Operation YouTube".
 * 7) Habbo, an online MMO was best known for player raids that storm certain areas which exploit the fact that the players are capable of blocking other players via lining up against certain places, such as the infamous "Pool's Closed" raid.
 * 8) Speaking of 4chan, the site is well known for their raids not just online but, on television and livestreams as well. A good example is the Independence Day Tumblr raid, which later 4chan and even Discord will later influence rules not to discuss or plan raids or any form of harassments.
 * 9) The Baidu Post Bar for Chinese KanColle suffered from raids back in January 2015 after 3 moderators were suspended without any warning due to being "reported by various users" and "uncooperative with related activities". The bar was filled with spam messages and many high quality posts were taken down, resulting in a drastic drop of user members. The official Chinese KanColle website also suffered from numerous DDoS attacks. The main motivation behind the raids is the rumour about how KanColle's private Chinese server staff bribed Baidu with ¥700,000 to replace the original mods with their own selection of members to promote their service.
 * 10) Back in July 2018, the creators of the Adult Swim cartoon Rick and Morty, Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon, were being harassed and doxxed online by alt-right trolls from /pol/ on 4chan and r/the_Donald on Reddit, among other sites after accusations of pedophilia and child pornography when one of their old dark humor sketches were discovered by many Twitter users.
 * 11) Back in 2018-2019, Howrse was raided by a bunch of troll accounts on multiple servers, using vulgar language, impersonating the admins/moderators (like Raf's Mum and Cailow), making their profile picture a middle finger, sending offensive messages, etc., but they possibly got IP blocked eventually and stopped.
 * 12) Animal Jam's chat was raided by a bunch of trolls using vulgar language and using certain words to bypass the filters, making the chat even more strict.
 * 13) Around 2009-10, a massive troll problem built up on Scratch. The forums were being attacked with inappropriate images on disposable accounts. In response, the Scratch Team disabled the ability to post images for a while. They later created the “new Scratcher” status to ensure that would never happen again.
 * 14) Discord servers sometimes get raided.
 * 15) Zoombombing is a prime example of raiding. It is raided by using the network Zoom, where the raiders most of the time put inappropriate content on the meeting; it's gotten so bad that a few Zoombombers got arrested for raiding meetings and Eric Yuan was forced to improve security on the server.
 * 16) A Youtuber by the name of Maximillianmus with most of his wannabe edgy fanbases went on to raid many small Twitch streamers by spamming and saying racist and homophobic things. And even saying "Oh Yeah Yeah Yeah". As of 2021, he deleted his channel after Crit1kal called him out for showing child porn in his Discord server, but however, his channel came back later on but most of somewhat of his videos were deleted.
 * 17) When Markiplier's niece (known as Miranda Cracraft) passed away on June 19, 2018 from a fatal car crash, on an unknown date, several trolls, alt accounts and automated bots mostly led by Logan Roof, Foodistzen and Louielol, have raided Markiplier's videos titled Update (before Mark himself disabled the comments on that video) and Special Message from Miranda’s Dad by spamming in the comment section making memes of Miranda's death and saying stuff such as, "Miranda went yeet out of the car" and saying she deserved it because she was a Trump supporter. There is a list of other raids these accounts do to get attention as examples, even if it's not always a YouTuber.
 * 18) * These same accounts have raided Jacksepticeye's channel on his Loss video when his father passed away from Covid-19. Similar to Markiplier's niece, these accounts have made many memes about his death, even saying that his father is burning is hell. Thankfully, Jacksepticeye has now closed the comment section on his video.
 * 19) * They raided DanTDM's comment section when his pet pug named Peggy died.
 * 20) * They attacked and raided Scott Cawthon, the maker of the FNAF games since people found out he donated to Anti-LGBT/Republican politicians such as Donald Trump on June 12, 2021. A few days later, when Scott Cawthon got cancelled by SJWs, far-leftists and Twitter, these troll accounts have laughed, cheered and made many rude memes about him, even creating a hashtag called scottdeservedit. They often call him Trans-phobic as well. Furthermore, some of these accounts even go as far to saying Scott's wife should be kicked in the stomach!
 * 21) * They laughed and made fun of a 14-year old teenage girl named Tristyn Bailey who died from being repeatedly stabbed and then made a hashtag saying freeaiden.
 * 22) * These accounts attacked Jaiden Animations for her song, Empty, and said that Jaiden Animations should starve herself for her eating disorder, anorexia. These accounts even say anorexia is not real, when it is real.
 * 23) * They laughed at a female police officer from the state of Virginia named Ashley Guindon, who died on her first day of her job when she was shot by a criminal named Ronald Hamilton.
 * 24) **They did the same to another police officer, this time, male NYPD unit, Jason Rivera, who passed away after getting shot in the head. Logan Roof for example made a video about playing Spongebob's The Best Day Ever music song over Jason Rivera's tragic death.
 * 25) * Small YouTubers are not even immune by this. Peter Jackson's death from Crazy Cabooses Creations was once raided and made fun of by these same accounts when he passed away from a heart surgery that went wrong on April 18, 2021.
 * 26) *Recently, these same accounts made fun of two tragedies in 2022: Russian invading Ukraine, and the recent Robb Elementary School shooting. Thankfully, many of the accounts that had videos mocking these sad tragedies were terminated on YouTube.

Why It Sucks in General

 * 1) It can cause sites to crash and other users to struggle with the site.
 * 2) The raiders usually get lots of attention via spamming messages repeatedly.
 * 3) They can also trigger DDoS and unresponsive servers to the website if hackers tagged along.
 * 4) Sometimes personal information can be doxxed out as well.
 * 5) To make matters worse, YouTube does almost nothing to internet trolls when they raid comment sections.