It's funny how everyone was so quick to condemn her, and when this article comes out, everyone is so quick to condemn the mob justice around her. To me it just shows how easily people's opinions are swayed when they read something that's influential to them.

I think your outlook on this is overly cynical. Your comment seems to suggest that nobody is capable of recognizing that both her comment and the response of the public were morally wrong.

Furthermore, I don't think it's fair to suggest that people need to be "swayed" into understanding that mob justice that destroys the lives of others is morally wrong. I think most people are aware of that, they just weren't aware that their actions on the internet led to those kinds of repercussions. This article wasn't making any excuses for the targets or attempting to sway the opinions of readers, its focus was to educate about the repercussions of our own actions.

More importantly, I don't see any "swaying" going on here. I think people are capable of recognizing that the mob isn't a bunch of faceless evil human beings. From what I've read here, I don't see the kind of vilification necessary to suggest that people here have switched sides and started to see the mob as inherently evil people deserving of punishment.

I just have a hard time understanding what you're trying to argue or where your point of view comes from.

And I'm not sure if it's the author's own editing, but it looks like all the subjects in the story are completely remorseless. The magnitude of backlash against them was obviously unwarranted, but you would think that after several years, they could see that maybe there's a reason why so many people were pissed off about the things they said.

And I don't see why this is surprising at all. Nobody tried to politely re-educate them or explain to them how what they did was insensitive. The natural response of any human being when faced with mocking hatred is to be defensive.

There are plenty of psych studies you can read on the subject matter of arguing/negotiation that can explain why the only conclusion most of these people took away from their experiences was how mean and destructive the internet can be. Publicly shaming somebody is quite literally one of the most scientifically ineffective ways of convincing somebody of your point of view.