Because of the democratizing potential of the Internet (and the increasing ability to find any information one wants online), we'll have to contend more and more with online mass action. Where this fits into the justice system we create as a society is anyone's guess.
When an American dentist named Walter Palmer killed a beloved lion named Cecil, the social media platforms that allowed outraged web users to spread the story also enabled them to do more than just fume. It gave them the power to act on their anger, to reach into Palmer's life and punish him for what he'd done, without having to wait for the wheels of more formal justice to turn.
Web users uncovered Palmer's personal information, including about his family, and published it online. They went after his business, a private dental practice, posting thousands of negative reviews on Yelp and other sites. The practice has since shut down. Users also went after professional websites that host his profile, leading the sites to remove his information. On Twitter and on his practice's public Facebook page, people made threats of physical violence.
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What Palmer did was wrong, and he deserves to be punished to the full extent of the law. But it's easy to forget just how dangerous and unjust "mob justice" is while it's targeting someone you despise. The more this behavior is normalized, the more likely it is to be deployed against targets who might not necessarily deserve to have their lives destroyed — including, perhaps one day, against you.
