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.

I have changed my mind about this. Someone on our village Facebook group posted a photo of a child complaining that they had tied their pony to their gate. They had seen it on cctv and decided to shame the child, demanding to know who it was.
Poor kid had left it there for two minutes while they bought sweets at the shop next door.

I reported it but it’s stayed up. Horrible busybody.

Our Next Door was full of people who were getting irrate at a Caravan appearing down on the shore. The "scruffy" man was obviously the advance of a load of others. You get my drift.

Turns out it was a security guard as the caravan was used for filming Mayflies.

Funnily enough it all went quiet after that. Nice to know who are the bigots round here though.

I hate this. Especially when it's kids

I don’t know what else I can do to get it taken down? He/She (hard to tell with hat on) looks so sweet, pats the pony and it was minutes left there. Busybody is claiming it’s on safety grounds but it’s on a track leading to a country estate.

Mostly I can't object to the pictures and questions. Just take it as factual comments & comment back. Pettiness should be called out, anyway (eg., child-pony-sweets).

Our NextDoor & Facebook are paranoid about dog thefts (meanwhile, Constabulary report approx 30 dog thefts/year in a population of 900k people...) and "white paint on the house means thieves will target you!" I told DH I was minded to go around painting half the houses in town with little white streaks, just for mischievous.

No, i wont try 🤬

Trail hunting often ends with a fox being ripped apart anyway ‘by accident’. Dogs will be dogs, eh? 🙄

It’s legal because people with money (Tories) still want to hunt and this is a loophole.

You'll argue I’m wrong, but I’ve seen it.

I am afraid I have seen it too 😢. No excuse for abuse towards children though. I live in a very rural area and the most aggressive posts on our village page I can guarantee will have guns on their profile picture. Some sort of insecure projection of masculinity.

Social media is the worst invention of the 21st century in my opinion. It's only served to give a platform for bellends to spread hate, division and negativity.

A spotted a post with a warning message about a van taking things from a front garden. Was my friends house do messaged her as I knew it had been agreed for them to take the stuff. She posted and explained and got kicked out!

It is, people online miss the facial responses or interactions that would stop misinterpretation or anger. Those with the loudest mouths and most stupid thoughts dominate it.

I agree, they shouldn’t be targeting children.

The torture and death is what happens to the fox though, and that makes some people feel very upset. I can’t imagine wanting to take my children into an environment where that might ‘accidentally’ happen.

My daughter ended up in one of these posts once when she was out with the local blood hounds

I mean, if you’re going to start shaming everyone, at least make sure you’ve got the right type of hunting.

I quite like these types of posts, it shows me who the idiots are. There is one local business owner on ours posting constant shaming shite - at least I know never to use his business

Not sure, I have mixed feelings about it. Catching someone in the act of doing something awful like the man stealing the wheelchair is good. But vague posts where someone thinks a wrong has been committed with no actual proof are appalling. Eg during lockdown there was a lot of shaming people for going out when in fact it turned out they were nurses working in hospitals etc. Unless you have actual evidence and know all the facts it shouldn’t be allowed.

This.

I left the group for my neighbouring village in 2020. Previously it had been friendly and often amusing but suddenly there were several posts moaning about outsiders walking or jogging there. I'd always walked and ran routes through or past the village with my dog - there are several public footpaths that go through or around it and it's only two miles away at most! It was just ridiculous.

🤔Spot the irony there, and win a 🍪

Best one I saw was ring doorbell footage of a ‘dodgy looking man skulking around’ in her garden. She was warning everyone in our area to be vigilant, convinced he was trying to break in.

It was the local Evri courier delivering parcels just before Christmas, he commented on the post to confirm he was the dodgy looking man.

I’m not an idiot so you can keep your biscuit. I know this is social media but overall I don’t think social media is a good thing. It has more negatives than positives in my opinion even if I’m still using it. It I wish it had never been invented.

I drink alcohol and can understand there are more negatives than positives in that and have wished I’d never drank the morning after a big night. There are nuances so your little biscuit isn’t the gotcha moment you’d hoped for.

Mumsnet is far worse than local Facebook groups for spreading hatred and fear at times, plus it gets picked up by traditional media who make it their speciality to spread hate and fear, and have done for many years.

Local FB and special interest groups can be extremely helpful and positive and add to community cohesion if well-moderated. I've had to hide entire topics on Mumsnet and try not to go on it much at all these days as it's pretty much all doomscrolling stuff.

We got a camera as someone was letting their dog toilet in our tiny front garden and never picking it up. As soon as the camera was up the problem stopped however if it had not I would probably have shared an image to our local group as it was disgusting.

I have been on the receiving end of a campaign of harassment by a former neighbour who made it her life’s mission to shame me for putting empty bin liners in her wheelie bin.

I wasn’t doing anything of the sort. But it didn’t stop her from:

• Calling me repeatedly at my office and asking me to remove the bin liners
• Putting in CCTV to “prove” I was doing it
• Writing to the council and the police accusing me of fly-tipping
• Putting unpleasant messages on Facebook groups/Nextdoor and gossiping to anyone who would listen

It was genuinely intimidating and completely false.

A PP is right: this is an extension of the “neighbourhood watch” mentality and a lot of it is cheap one-upmanship, control and small mindedness. It’s usually people who feel they have little control over their own lives and project onto near strangers who they perceive to be a soft target.

Yes these groups can identify real crime and antisocial behaviour but 75% of it is petty stickybeakery.

I don’t think it can be banned really because it’s impossible to know where the line is and there is some genuinely neighbourly behaviour. People just need to approach it a bit more critically.

Sometimes I think it’s justified

recent examples of mine, someone coming along after midnight and stealing some produce that had an honesty box , like taking rhe lot, and doing it repeatedly

someone’s who walked their dogs off lead in a field with sheep , the second time the dogs attacked. The owner put out the images.

someone filmed stealing a car.

Oh lockdown brought out all the scumbags on local gossip sites here.

They couldn't see the travellers so they all became amateur sleuths shaming people who they felt had been out their house more than once

One vile cow on my local street was one of the worst. She photographed a house 4 doors up from me as a "persistent offender" who she had "reported to the police" as they were a "covidiot" and had a constant stream of females in their property. The language she used to describe these females was out the Bill.

It caused others in the "I am suddenly Sherlock Holmes" to be abusive and offer to make complaints to police too as a "concerned citizen" and that she should consider a Covid compliant citizens arrest on one of the ladies. There was even the far fetched suggestion that they most be sex workers.

Police did turn up and hammered on the door but one of the ladies popped her head out the door and the police left quite quickly.

This caused further anger that police were useless and should've raided the house and arrested them all.

Imagine the shame of them when a lady who has lived on my street for about 40 years and who knows many on the street popped up, told them all off as the house was owned by a very elderly man, and the ladies were nurses as he was having end of life care. She said that the poor guy was very near the end and thank goodness wasn't on social media. She said she was disgusted in the one who had started it off and as she knew her landlord would be telling him what had gone on and the harassment she had tried to cause that man.

She did indeed leave not that long after, not due to the landlord but because it was very obvious that she knew she fucked up. The elderly guy passed away about two weeks after it calmed down and before she moved out.

Anytime I did see her she looked very uncomfortable. Good!

You literally couldn't sneeze here though without someone having an opinion on it. We got shamed because apparently, we had someone sit in a car parked in the street outside our house whilst we stood at the door. Yes we did, it was a mate who was struggling with his mental health and lived alone. He literally came nowhere near us but that 10 minutes chat made him feel better as he said he was finding it very difficult to get by and his mental health was terrible.

I agree OP. A lot of the posters also claim an uncanny ability to recognise someone’s ethnicity / nationality. So there’s posts saying “There’s a white van on our road with three East European men”.

I commented once when someone was blustering on about a group of Albanian men in a car park, and asked politely how they knew the men were Albanian. Did she speak Albanian herself maybe? Got a response along the lines of “I could just tell”.