Today heritage sites not only preserve the memory of grandiose moments of history, but also include the darker ones, which were previously either preferably forgotten or went unrecognised. In Finnish history, it is difficult to find a more painful example of these “sites of pain and shame” than the 1918 Civil War. This article examines the different ways that the 1918 Finnish Civil War is commemorated and represented on the Internet today, on both private and institutional websites as well as in social media, from the perspective of participatory history culture and vernacular authority. People have always shared information concerning the past with each other, but the way that this can be observed on the Internet today is novel. Only after the rise of new technology, the Internet and especially Web 2.0, people have had the possibility to share their experiences and interpretations side by side with history professionals to this degree. In relation to memory and heritage politics, this means that we need to re-examine the boundaries between private and public memory and official and unofficial heritage, and recognise new forms of collaboration between audiences and institutions.