Shaming people on Facebook

[Jessiejines]

AIBU that shaming people on Facebook should be illegal?

I'm on about the ones on local community Facebook groups who post pictures of people.

Example of some from my local:

Image of some man walking his dog with a woman in the early hours. Quite a grainy shot so can't really see their faces.

"Anybody recognise these two? I think they've let their dog poop on my front garden and not picked it up".

Picture of a young lady itting on a field.

"Just seen this young girl throw rubbish on the field. Should be taught some manners"

Picture of a white van with the license plate on show

"Watch out for this van. Seems a bit dodgy knocking on doors"

I know a lot of the time it's about problems like rubbish, littering etc. but I think posting photos of people online is a bit like a witch-hunt. Especially when other people comment aswell.

If you pick up your dog shit and don’t drop litter, you haven’t got anything to worry about?

Driveway parking blockers/shit dangerous parking at school gates are the only people really named and shamed on our local FB. Again, nothing to worry about if you don’t park like a twat.

If you suspect someone in your neighbour of dodgy behaviour send pics to police. Agree that these suspicious people are often described as Eastern European etc.
Or inform the RSPCA.
Don't publicly write libellous things, post photos without consent. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty.
Just encourages unsubstantiated hate. And discord. Although some more rampant racists are shot down by public opinion, other insidious claims stick.

Plus have seen no evidence pile ons on Nextdoor, bit like Mumsnet, except that victim is known locally.

Two spring to mind. The first the same as you describe, only this time it was 7am and a woman.
it was posted around 10am and by lunchtime they’d called her for every name under the sun, she was clearly scum, on the rob etc etc. That poor woman when she came home from her job as a community carer had to explain she was going to a client and had walked down the wrong path. Again, silence from the OP.

As for milkmen, someone posted about a dodgy looking bloke on the street at 3am, first reply was “I looked out of the window at that time and phill from milk and more was out delivering”. Response from the OP was not “oh it will be him then” oh no, the paranoia is far too severe for that… the response was that they’d call the dairy and see if they’d seen the dodgy bloke. They absolutely could not comprehend that they’d seen the milkman 😂

Ah, I was named and shamed on FB a few years ago. It truly was horrible. Someone ( a bored junky) took pics off my fb then claimed I'd been seen beating my dog.
No proof, just attention seeking village idiots.
I didnt hit my dog but wow the comments. Had to get police involved when death threats started. It was amazing the amount of people who were going to kick my head in the next day and...... didn't. In fact when I met them in Tesco couldn't even look at me. 😁
Ended up with RSPCA and social services at my door cos I hit my kids too. Allegedly.
All happy my dog and kids were not being beaten or abused!
But hey the village idiots had a great evenings entertainment (OMG I'll tag you Hun)
I wave and smile at them still.

I feel like I’m on the only sane local FB group in the world.

Not so controversial post include;

• Is this your cat, he’s cute just making sure he has a home to go to
• Be careful, spotted a coyote on the corner of Chestnut and Main
• Is this your umbrella… high winds last night blew it into our yard
• TGIF this week is being hosted by the Bennetts from 4-6pm bring your own drinks and a chair.

I would love to join a batshit group to be a virtual fly on the wall.

We have that😂
"It looks lost"
It's bloody well fed, groomed cat mate which just looks confused because of the flaah on camera 😂

From my experience most driving parents park dangerously. Hence the push back😉

Another that springs to mind is the local church children group who did an Easter egg hunt through the village. They went all round wire tying clues to lamp posts and street signs etc.
When finished they tore down the laminated signs but the wire ties remained. 6 months later one on a street sign appears on the village page warning everyone their home has now been marked to have their dog stolen. No amount of “it’s the church group” would placate.

nobody wants your Heinz 57 Sandra, and if they did want a random dog there are enough of them running loose (according to Facebook) that they wouldn’t need to use an elaborate scheme involving wire ties and weird chalked on symbols on the pavement.

On my local page a woman wrote a long rant about how people need to not walk their dogs near her dogs because her dog doesn’t like other dogs.

She said that her dog shouldn’t have to go on a leash just because other people didn’t want to leash their dogs, that her dog was only aggressive to other dogs not to people so it’s not dangerous and “if your dog isn’t on lead and gets attacked then that’s on you not me” and even that her dog was so large that there was no point her putting it on a leash because it’s be able to get away anyway if it wanted to.

The majority of commenters actually agreed with her - it was just absurd. Local Facebook pages are weird places.

Depends what you mean by shaming really. Uploading an unflattering photo and mocking someone for being unattractive is just plain mean and should be viewed as psychological 'assualt'
Showing a pic of someone you've seen going into people's gardens is fair game to me, as would someone leaving litter/dog muck....but I'd need to know for sure they did do that (ie evidence)
Uploading a pic of a guy in the park that was 'looking at my kids....and I know for sure he didn't have kids with him' is dangerous
Likewise 'saw this van today. Looks like dodgy Romainians/travellors/illegal immigrants. I'd consider these on a parr with public order offences.
But simply posting the truth...this car bumped a red fiat in Asda car park.....yes, shame em!

Ours are self regulating and sort themselves out. You do get the odd armchair lawyer claiming that it’s illegal to post photos of people taken in a public place or vague threats of ‘libel’. They get ignored. I couldn’t care less if someone is posted doing something anti social or illegal, it’s a natural outcome of people getting frustrated at police cuts and wanting to improve their local area.

My groups are very left wing leaning too, interested in all these ‘gammon’ clubs that apparently exist.

I posted a Ring doorbell image of a teenager on social media. Identified them very quickly and got parents involved of the whole group. Quickly sorted out the issue and now we have no more problems.

To just do it to harass people though should be illegal.

Hmmm, I’m on the fence. Anyone not picking up dog shit is fair game.

i did similar once. I came out my house to go to work at 6am to find a man stood in my garden with his nose pressed up against my front room window. I asked him what on Earth he was doing and gave me some garbled story about how he’d been kicked off the train at the train stop in our village and wanted to get to x town. He seemed to be making it up as he went. I asked him to leave and he wouldn’t and kept following me round my car in circles as I asked him to stop approaching me.

I blatantly took a photo of him in the end and said to him that he seemed as dodgy as hell and if anything happened I now had his photo. I left to go to work and he was still in my garden!

I put his photo on the local fb group to warn people there was someone very odd about and others said he’d done similar to other houses, the pcso turned up and moved him on. Think he’d been let out of prison the day before and was meant to be going home but had been kicked off the train for causing problems.

Oh and another time I posted a photo from cctv of the lads who had climbed on my car bonnet and bounced up and down causing 1k of damage. Which resulted in Them coming round and paying me 1k so I didn’t go to the police.

Thank you for clarifying.

Unfortunately, no, Facebook do not remove comments of that nature regards Travellers, not in my experience, according to them, it's not against their community guidelines.

It's a sad fact that travellers face discrimination constantly but don't seem to have the same protection as other protected groups. I refuse to go to a local pub now because last time I went, for a fun day, a group of travellers in their twenties turned up, behaved impeccably, gave a donation and was then refused service when they went to get another drink. They had done nothing whatsoever. DH even said at the bar why are you asking them to leave? The thing that really gutted me was one of the guys turned to him and said "it's Ok mate, we're used to it"

Someone I really liked and respected posted a picture in lockdown. They were in a shop and it had those spots you had to stand on to queue for social distancing. An elderly man was stood about 20cm off the spot. She captioned the picture with the words "it's really not that hard".

It really changed my view of her. She had no idea what that man was going through at the time.

Covid made social media a much unkinder place in general I think.

Covid made social media a much unkinder place in general I think.

Because all the real life twats had no other outlet than online. Normally they eould be out and about abusing service staff ...

Getting better but some are refusing to give up the power online gives them

Savoirfaire, what's an a class or a 1 series, or michael kors rose gold?

dh broke down
his car was on facebook with complaints about a badly parked car!

Oh god there’s always one…

My dsil ended up on one if these for being odd and knocking on people's doors. Shebwas just trying to do someone a favour. They described her in such a mean way she wouldn't go out anymore because she was worried people would recognise her from the description and judge her. Just horrible.

It’s the paedophile hunters that get me. Can’t hear them or their “sting” videos.

I admin a Facebook village group. My goodness! You get some people who have absolutely no idea how awful they are being. I protect the right of reportage, but that means you have to be dead on with admining the comments. My favourite was someone who posted a photo of a badly parked car (fair enough) but didn't want to identify the owner. It was pointed out to them by Admin that they could have put a note under the windscreen rather than publicly shaming but they insisted it wasn't that because they hadn't posted the numberplate.

Reporting of facts is fine on my group. Opinion has to be respectful/respectfully given or it's a deletion and a muting. Not everyone agrees.

I saw one recently where someone said "don't use XY gardener. He said he would be here at 9 am, it's now 930 and no sign of him"
Big pile on of "thanks, hun, will avoid" then actual gardener came on saying "sorry, I made a start in the garden as agreed at 9 am without ringing on doorbell, alerted poster I was here about five mins after she posted this. Sorry, my fault."
Most people continued to respond to original, did not see this update and several days later OP had not come back to thread or apologised.
If someone posted this story to Mumsnet, probably a lot of people would be on her side as gardener did not knock (maybe I should have saved the story for AIBU), but I think stuff like this should be taken down immediately.