Online shaming
Online shaming is a form of public shaming in which targets are publicly humiliated on the internet, via social media platforms, or more localized media. As online shaming frequently involves exposing private information on the Internet, the ethics of public humiliation has been a source of debate over Internet privacy and media ethics. Online shaming takes many forms, including call-outs, cancellation, doxing, negative reviews, and revenge porn.
Description
Online shaming is a form of public shaming in which internet users are harassed, mocked, or bullied by other internet users online. This shaming may involve commenting directly to or about the shamed; the sharing of private messages; or the posting of private photos. Those being shamed are often accused of committing a social transgression, and other internet users then use public exposure to shame the offender.People have been shamed online for a variety of reasons, usually consisting of some form of social transgression such as posting offensive comments, posting offensive images or memes, online gossip, or lying. Those who are shamed online have not necessarily committed any social transgression, however. Online shaming may be used to get revenge, stalk, blackmail, or to threaten other internet users.
Privacy violation is a major issue in online shaming. Those being shamed may be denied the right to privacy and be subject to defamation. David Furlow, chairman of the Media, Privacy and Defamation Committee of the American Bar Association, has identified the potential privacy concerns raised by websites facilitating the distribution of information that is not part of the public record and has said that such websites "just a forum to people whose statements may not reflect truth."
There are different philosophical perspectives on the morality of online public shaming. On the one hand, there is the view that public shaming imposes punishments that are not proportional to the offenses or alleged offenses. Martha Nussbaum similarly says that public shaming represents the "justice of the mob", but this alleged justice is not "deliberative, impartial or neutral". On the other hand, there are those who defend the value of public shaming as constructive, if done right; people who defend this view maintain that society often shames people counter-productively but that it can be tweaked or altered in order to be a valuable tool for people's improvement. For instance, holding people accountable for things that they have done wrong can be a powerful way of correcting bad behavior, but it has to be paired with a belief in the possibility of redemption. Some proponents of this approach agree with Plato’s view that shame can lead to moral improvements. Everyone in this debate agrees that it is important to avoid what Nussbaum calls a "spoiled identity": to have a spoiled identity is to have the public image of someone who is irredeemable and unwelcome in a community.
Types
Call-outs and cancellation
Cancel culture or call-out culture describes a form of ostracism in which someone or something is thrust out of social or professional circles, either online on social media, in the real world, or both. They are said to be "canceled". Lisa Nakamura, professor of media studies at the University of Michigan, has defined cancelling as simply a "cultural boycott" in which the act of depriving someone of attention deprives them of their livelihood.The notion of cancel culture is a variant of the term "call-out culture", and constitutes a form of boycott involving an individual who is deemed to have acted or spoken in a questionable or controversial manner.
Cancel culture has been noted as a prominent topic of discussion in American society. Most Americans find the term more associated with social media and entertainment instead of politics. In 2021 Business Insider conducted a poll in conjunction with SurveyMonkey that asked 1,129 respondents "When you hear the term 'cancel culture,' which of the following do you most associate it with? Please select all that apply." 48% of respondents identified cancel culture with social media, 34% identified cancel culture with the entertainment industry, 31% associated it with the news media, 20% listed colleges, and 16% did not know what cancel culture was. Regarding politics, partisan splits on this issue were widespread; for instance, almost half of Republicans associated cancel culture with Democrats.
Doxing
Doxing involves researching and broadcasting personally identifiable information about an individual, often with the intention of harming that person. This information may include the person's home address, workplace or school, full name, spouse, credit card information, and phone number.Bruce Schneier, a lecturer and fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, has elaborated that doxing does not just happen to individuals. Companies such as Sony and Ashley Madison have been involved in doxing schemes.
Negative reviews
User-generated review sites such as Yelp, Google Maps and Trip Advisor have been used to publicly shame or punish businesses. Research suggests that the quality of the review makes a difference on how the businesses assess their product, as well as the number of negative reviews received. Other studies have shown that not responding to negative reviews has better outcomes than replying to negative reviews, but businesses should reply to negative reviews to avoid other users blaming the company for the problem.Revenge porn
Non-consensual sharing of sexually explicit material in order to humiliate a person, is frequently distributed by computer hackers or ex-partners. Images and videos of sexual acts are often combined with doxing of a person's private details, such as their home addresses and workplaces. In some jurisdictions, revenge porn is a criminal offense.Social status shaming
Social status shaming is a form of online shaming that involves bullying others online due to their socioeconomic status. It is often utilized as a vessel for social control among classes, and has been regarded as one of the most effective models in which to examine social status and its influence on controlling those below oneself.Examples
Justine Sacco incident
In December 2013, Justine Sacco, a woman with 170 Twitter followers, tweeted acerbic jokes during a plane trip from New York to Cape Town, such as "'Weird German Dude: You're in First Class. It’s 2014. Get some deodorant.' — Inner monologue as I inhale BO. Thank God for pharmaceuticals." and, in Heathrow; "Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just Kidding. I'm white!" Sacco, a South African herself, claimed that she intended the tweet to mock American ignorance of South Africa, and in a later interview expressed that her intention was to "mimic—and mock what an actual racist, ignorant person would say." Sacco slept during her 11-hour plane trip, and woke up to find out that she had lost her job and was the number-one Twitter topic worldwide, with celebrities and new media bloggers all over the globe denouncing her and encouraging all their followers to do the same. Sacco's employer, New York internet firm IAC, declared that she had lost her job as Director of Corporate Communications. People began tweeting "Has Justine landed yet?", expressing schadenfreude at the loss of her career. Sam Biddle, the Gawker Media blogger who promoted the #HasJustineLandedYet hashtag, later apologised for his role, admitting that he did so for Internet traffic to his blog, and noting that "it's easy and thrilling to hate a stranger online."According to journalist Jon Ronson, the public does not understand that a vigilante campaign of public shaming, undertaken with the ostensible intention of defending the underdog, may create a mob mentality capable of destroying the lives and careers of the public figures singled out for shaming. Ronson argued that in the early days of Twitter, people used the platform to share intimate details of their lives, and not as a vehicle of shaming. Brooke Gladstone argued that the Sacco affair may deter people from expressing themselves online due to a fear of being misinterpreted. Kelly McBride argues that journalists play a key role in expanding the shame and humiliation of targets of the campaigns by relaying claims to a larger audience, while justifying their actions as simply documenting an event in an impartial manner. She writes: "Because of the mob mentality that accompanies public shaming events, often there is very little information about the target, sometimes only a single tweet. Yet there is a presumption of guilt and swift move toward justice, with no process for ascertaining facts." McBride further notes, "If newspapers ran front-page photos of adulterers in the Middle East being stripped naked and whipped in order to further their shame, we would criticize them as part of a backward system of justice." Ben Adler compared the Sacco incident to a number of Twitter hoaxes, and argued that the media needs to be more careful to fact-check articles and evaluate context.
Ashley Madison data breach
In July 2015, a group hacked the user data of Ashley Madison, a commercial dating website marketed as facilitating extramarital affairs. In August 2015, over 30 million user account details—including names and email addresses—were released publicly.A variety of security researchers and Internet privacy activists debated the ethics of the release.
Clinical psychologists argue that dealing with an affair in a particularly public way increases the pain for spouses and children. Carolyn Gregoire argued "ocial media has created an aggressive culture of public shaming in which individuals take it upon themselves to inflict psychological damage" and more often than not, "the punishment goes beyond the scope of the crime." Charles J. Orlando, who had joined the site to conduct research on women who cheat, said that he felt users of the site were anxious about the release of sexually explicit messages that would humiliate their spouses and children. He wrote that it is alarming that "the mob that is the Internet is more than willing to serve as judge, jury, and executioner" and members of the site "don't deserve a flogging in the virtual town square with millions of onlookers."