CoVID-19, "shaming," and cyberbullying

[rslade]

Watching the news, yesterday, I saw two different government officials, from different provinces, and one television commentator recommend that, if you saw any evidence of hoarding, you should "shame" the perps on social media.

I can understand the frustration.  I really can.  Hoarding is insidious, and it is terribly destructive to the community as a whole during a crisis.  Those who are "bulk buying" in order to resell at a huge markup are despicable.  (I don't care if you think it's the "American Way."  It's despicable.)  Those who are stealing hospital supplies should definitely be prosecuted.

But I don't think those who recommend public social media "shaming" understand social media.  "Shaming" is one post away from cyberbullying.  If social media is about anything, it's about disproportionate overreaction.  It has no off switch, no censorship or moderation, and no "right to be forgotten" or means of redress.  We've already seen instances of mistaken or misunderstood postings going wildly viral during this crisis, and we're going to see more.  Don't add to them.

[Caute_cautim]

@rslade    Well from this end of the world we are on COVID-19 Level 2 for the whole nation:

All visitors coming from overseas, must quarantine themselves for 14 days.  However, there are many stories of this not being followed, which is causing the number of infected to raise to 53 so in the space of days.  This is a very small number.  But given that New Zealand, Hawaii and Australia are effectively the boundary for the Pacific Islands, where they have very little capability to protect themselves at all.

In my case, just about to commence the second week of working from home remotely, like the rest of my colleagues.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/new-zealand-police-to-carry-out-spot-checks-to-ensure-...

Regards

Caute_cautim

[rslade]

OK, an example of how "shaming" can go wrong.

Vancouver's "home town" hockey team is the Canucks.  For home games, a professional singer, Mark Donnelly, has long been the regular for singing the national anthem (or anthems, when we have American teams in town) before the game.  His "schtick" has been to stop singing after the first four phrases or "O Canada," and let the audience sing the next eight.  He's been quite popular.

Well, he seems to have let that popularity go to his head.  He decided that he was famous enough to sing the national anthem at an anti-mask rally and get away with it.  Apparently he wasn't.  No sooner had he announced his intention to sing at the rally, than the owners of the Canucks announced that he was now the ex-anthem singer for the hockey games.

And boy, did people ever let him know it, on Twitter.

Trouble is, Mark Donnelly, the Vancouver singer, doesn't have an account on Twitter.  But Mark Donnelly, the British football writer, does.  And it was he who was getting all the flames.

To which he responded very composedly, all things considered ...