Digital Shaming Is A Crime
Digital shaming or online public shaming, the moral policing trend looks picking up now.
Few social media users have been uploading and sharing photos and videos of unmarried couples and young boys and girls found in public places, for example in parks.
What Is Digital Shaming Or Shaming On Social Media?
- Internet shaming is the practice of criticizing a specific person or group on social media, blogs, and other online communication platforms such as Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, etc
- Attacks, frequently have the intention of humiliating their target in front of others, frequently as payback for some action.
After personal moral policing and forcing opinions seems to fail on their acquaintance or on unknown, by a section of psychotic people, they have now taken to digital shaming unmarried couples and lovers on social media.
Digital Shaming Is A kind of social Cyberbullying
READ | How Bullying Can Negatively Affect People
Recently, some people have been caught on camera filming personal acts between couples in public settings like parks, hotels, malls, multiplexes, and restaurants.
- 9.2% of youngsters surveyed in the Delhi-National Capital Region had experienced online shaming.
- Half of them had not reported it to teachers, guardians, or social media companies concerned.
- Vulnerability rose with internet use: 22.4% of respondents used the internet.
These videos were also posted on certain Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter sites to get viral views on their posts. But, what they forget is they also publicly humiliate the couples leading to stress and stigma.
Also, the admins and some users of these pages, post messages requesting viewers to help identify the couples in the videos, especially the females, so that their parents may be notified about them being seen moving intimately with their lovers or partners.
This is even worse, when the couple belongs to two different religions, they are aggressively destroyed.
Earlier, moral policing has been witnessed on particular days like Valentine’s Day, when unmarried couples or lovers are caught and forcibly married.
However, the city Police say that there are no complaints inputs from victims in this regard so far.
As the technology grew and people got easy access to opine their views on several social media forms, the digital moral policing trend looks picking up now.
Digital Shaming consequences?
- The victim of the shaming may have psychological damage, get death threats, or lose their job as a result of the occurrence.
- The individual who shames another person could also experience reprisal and unfavorable effects in their own lives, which, in certain situations, include a legal or criminal lawsuit.
Digital Shaming On Social Media- What Can You Do As Per Law?
Hyderabad Police Warns People Against Digital Shaming
The tech-elevated Hyderabad Police is now equipped with several units of policing under a single roof, constantly monitoring via CCC with a chain of over 9.25 lakh CCTV cameras installed all over Telangana State.
This is helping officials with monitoring using high-end technology and is constantly observing offline and online activities to maintain law and order.
The cyber wing is also monitoring various social media platforms for any anti-social, aggressive, outrageous, nefarious, and objectionable content if any, is posted.
In the due course, the Hyderabad cyber crime police officials have warned people against posting online shaming content on social media as it would be categorized under the illegal act and they could be booked for harassment and sections of the IT Act and prosecuted.
Police are also contemplating taking suo motu action and booking cases against such users and profiles.
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