Online shaming
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 (documents filed with a government agency) and has said that such websites "just [give] a forum to people whose statements may not reflect truth.
[4] This is closely related to John Stuart Mill's criticism of offline public shaming: he argued in On Liberty that society "practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself".
[7] 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.
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?
Regarding politics, partisan splits on this issue were widespread; for instance, almost half of Republicans associated cancel culture with Democrats.
User-generated review sites such as Yelp, Google Maps and Trip Advisor have been used to publicly shame or punish businesses.
[28] 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 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.
"[37][38] 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.
[37][38] 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,[36] and noting that "it's easy and thrilling to hate a stranger online.
[35] 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.
[35] 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.
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.
[41] In July 2015, a group hacked the user data of Ashley Madison, a commercial dating website marketed as facilitating extramarital affairs.
[46] Carolyn Gregoire argued "[s]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.
[47] 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.
"[47] In 2015, British biochemist Sir Tim Hunt, who won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, was involved in a highly publicized controversy at the World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ) in Seoul.
They decided to publicize his remarks on Twitter, giving St Louis the task of writing a short text to be tweeted and corroborated by the other two.
"[52][57] Numerous media outlets reported on the incident and the interview, citing portions of Hunt's original remarks and criticizing them as sexist.
[66][48][67][68] In a letter to The Times a group of 29 staff scientists, students and postdoctoral fellows, both male and female, who had worked with Hunt, wrote in support of his character.
[71] In November 2014, while giving a televised status update on the Rosetta spacecraft, Matt Taylor wore a shirt depicting scantily-clad cartoon women with firearms made by his friend, a female artist.
[72][73][74] Taylor's decision to wear the shirt to a press conference drew criticism from a number of commentators,[75][76] who saw a reflection of a culture where women are unwelcome in scientific fields (see gender inequality).
[81][83] A campaign was set up on the crowdfund website Indiegogo,[84] with the objective of raising $3,000 to buy Taylor a gift, as a token of the public's appreciation for the work that he and the team had done.
[87] In October 2013, a delicately balanced hoodoo in Goblin Valley State Park was intentionally knocked over by Boy Scout leaders who had been camping in the area.
[91] David Benjamin Hall captured video and shouted encouragement while Glenn Tuck Taylor toppled the formation.
[93] Their claim that the hoodoo appeared unstable, and that they vandalized it out of concern for passersby, was rejected by Fred Hayes, director of the Utah Division of State Parks and Recreation.
One paper quoted Daniel Solove as saying that the woman was the victim of a "cyber-posse, tracking down norm violators and branding them with digital Scarlet Letters.
Instead she received a very unapologetic letter stating that she (Griggs) herself should be thanked for making the piece better and that Gaudio should be glad that she didn't give someone else credit for writing the article.
