The digital world is just as crazy as the real world. Your entire career and future can be ruined by one bad post on social media. The stories of cyber-vigilantism like the one described in the video below are not good.
In general cyber-vigilantism goes to far on the internet as in the case above where it’s less about justice and more about revenge and attacking someone. I think people go way too far most of the time when it comes to calling out mistakes online. There is a right way to do this without attacking a person or anyone they know. There are great examples of how this type of behaviour can be modeled online. A good example I can think of is a creator on YouTube called Pleasant Green. He interacts with internet scammers online, brings awareness to different scams and helps victims of scams. While he pokes fun at scammers he also has videos where he helps scammers to quit scamming find a better path. He shows the human side of scammers and the situations they are in. Instead of just attacking them he actively looks for ways to show them a better path. This is how we should be approaching cyber-vigilantism in general on the internet in my opinion. We can call out what someone does wrong, but instead of attacking them we can try to understand their position. There are certainly times where the person may just be terrible, but if we attack them we aren’t any better than they are.
Digital footprints can have a lasting impact on your life. It’s important to be aware of what we are posting as the world of cyber-vigilantism isn’t going anywhere and has only gotten worse in the recent years. We need to think of the digital world as the real world, if you wouldn’t say something to a random group of strangers on the street, then you shouldn’t say it to a group of strangers on the internet. While I don’t think it’s fair that people are harassed for genuine mistakes, it is the reality of world we live in and until it changes being careful about what we say is all we can do.
Hey Kamden, I really enjoyed reading your post! I totally agree with you when you mentioned that you think people sometimes go way too far when it comes to attacking people online. There is often times when I find myself scrolling through social media and I see someone sharing a post or video of someone else’s mistake and I click on the comments just to see how many negative ones there are because you almost expect it these days. Some people are far too comfortable with attacking someone that they don’t even know simply because the internet allows them too and that is so disheartening. I think sometimes people forget that the person on the receiving end is HUMAN and that they have feelings and emotions too. Nobody is perfect and we don’t always make the right choices but that doesn’t mean they deserve to be completely hated on by random strangers!