The Sweepers are just an ideology, also not necessarily an organized force for justice. That's what they'd want to be, but more often than not they're just people who are pissed at being picked on by players who think they can just kill whoever they want because they can. The true, or at least first, purpose of the Sweepers is to serve it's the Erasers, hackers, who use their hacks to harass players who annoy them both in Deep Ground and in Real Life. Right now they just have a vigilante bent. If you don't make infamy as a PKer, you won't catch their attention unless you bother someone with a lot of influence. If anything, the Sweepers [b]are[/b] the Assassin Guild, albeit one that isn't properly formed or openly endorsed.

What Zombeh described is a pretty accurate PR description, one that most Sweepers emphasis. There's two faces to the Sweepers; the ones who claim to be fighting for newbies so they don't have to worry about asshole elite players (Sweepers), and the elite players who want a more permanent means to get rid of rivals and competition (Erasers). Since Sweepers make up the majority of the numbers they get called Sweepers, but it's the Erasers who call the hits and run the show.