The Rise of the Social Media Vigilante

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility — Benjamin “Ben” Parker

In recent months there appears to have been a spike in the number of social media posts reporting “criminals” and “criminal activity” in an effort to track down, and in some cases shame, as a method of punishment, the subject of the post. It feels somewhat rare to login to a social media platform at present and not see a request to find, or watch out for, a known criminal at large that has broken into somebodies grandmother’s house, stolen a puppy from a back yard or is suspiciously driving a pictured white van around the neighbourhood. The posts are so abundant that it is quite easy to convince oneself that we are, at all times, surrounded by an endless league of threats to civil society and public order. You may even start to believe that the only hope we have to maintain our way of life is for a super hero to emerge from the ashes of our burning cities and clean up the streets with vigilante justice handed out without prejudice, and that is kind of what has happened. Just with less fancy masks and underwear in there correct place beneath the trousers.

The motives of the authors of such social media posts are not what I intend to question, but the negative consequences of such social media vigilantism. I am sure that at the moment of writing such a post the author truly believes that they have the best interest of society at heart, but I believe the truth and ensuing result to be somewhat different in reality.

Innocent Until Proven Accused

The first problem I see with this particular flavour of vigilantism is in the accusation itself. There are plenty of documented cases where just by the very action of accusing someone of a crime, the accused have had their lives unnecessarily ruined, only later to be found innocent after the damage has already been done. As an example of where vigilantes have made a terrible and life changing mistake, take the case of the paediatrician who was driven out of her home by vigilantes who mistook her job title as meaning she was a paedophile.

Online shaming is such a big issue that it is even the topic of a New York Times Best Seller.

Public Shaming and Mob Justice

I often see this type of post after it has been shared enough to have come across the path of a friend, who has in turn continued the chain of sharing in an effort to help find the person supposedly responsible for committing a crime against a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, believing that in sharing the post they are helping bring the perpetrator to justice. However, by sharing the post, further expanding its reach from its origin, we are potentially damaging the reputation of an innocent person on the word of someone we have never met or even interacted with. The posts are often shared hundreds of times, potentially appearing in the feeds of thousands of people, most of whom have never even heard of the victim but are still willing to share the post in the belief that they are performing a public duty, and that their actions are both morally justifiable and absolutely necessary for public safety and the apprehension of a criminal-at-large.

The picture accompanying this genre of social media post is often of a man looking what society would deem, the caption and ensuing comments often re-enforcing, as a “low-life”. We are judging a book by an unhealthy combination of its cover and a review by a panel of unqualified and often ill informed critics.

If you find yourself in possession of a picture of a person who has, in your opinion, committed a crime against you or someone that you know, this is evidence that should be given to the police, not posted on Facebook with an accompanying description of the crime you believe has been committed followed closely by some unpleasant comments about the pictured individual. When the police make an announcement that they are looking for a person in connection with an active case, they post in a neutral, non-accusative way for a reason, and here is why…

Adverse Effects of Online Vigilantism

Other than the possibility of damage to the reputation of an innocent person, there is also the damage to the potential case against a guilty party. In this document released by Cumbria police on the guidance of the release of wanted images and CCTV, the required wording of the press release is described as follows:

Care must be taken over the wording that accompanies images of suspects or unnamed wanted people. You must not imply guilt where someone has not been convicted. You must state on facts. Never speculate.

It also states that

The main legal consideration to take before releasing an image or CCTV footage is the Human Rights Act, to ensure a balance is struck between an individual’s right to a fair trial and a private life versus public interest and the prevention of crime and disorder.

and

In sensitive cases it may be advisable to seek advice from CPS to ensure that a case is not jeopardised.

By wording social media posts aggressively asserting the guilt of the pictured suspected criminal, the author is potentially damaging any case the police may be able to build against them. If this post spreads far and wide, as the author most likely intends, there is a good chance that it will appear on the feed of someone who may one day be asked to sit on the Jury in the accused’s case. This reduces the chance of the person in question getting a fair trial, something which our judiciary system is built upon and every single person deserves.

In a study reported on by The BBC on the effects of media on juries, it was found that more jurors admitted to having inadvertently seen information on the internet relating to the case than admitted to having specifically searched for information relating to the case. It is no stretch of the imagination then, given the connected world in which we live, to conceive that this may be dramatically exaggerated by the emergence of online vigilante posts.

What Next?

I do often wonder what the author would do if the name and address of the pictured perpetrator was posted in the comments section. Would they pass this information on to the police? Or take their vigilantism offline? If the accused is the hardened criminal they make him or her out to be, this would not seem like a particularly sensible or safe course of action.

It is also worth considering that if the pictured person was indeed the dangerous criminal the author was painting them to be, they might not be best pleased to find someone sharing an image of them online, pointing out that they are indeed a dangerous criminal. It is relatively easy to find the source of such a post and see who has been sharing it, so you may actually be putting your own personal safety at risk by partaking in the online witch hunt. After all, there is a reason why the super hero vigilantes in comic books and action movies always wear a mask and keep their identity a secret!

If the author was not in the mood for dishing out some offline vigilante justice and would indeed pass this information on to the police, why not let the police do this for them in the first place? After all, the social media reach of the police today is quite large, much larger than the author and their circle of friends. I certainly do not have any friends with 171,000 followers on any social media platform, which is how many people (at the time of writing this article) follow the London Metropolitan Police’s Facebook page.

Given this, it is quite clear that the police posting a wanted picture of a suspect would result in a much speedier apprehension of the suspected criminal without jeopardising any case they may have against them. So let them do their job and give them the evidence they need to do so effectively from the start!

In Conclusion

Before posting or sharing a vigilante style post on a social media platform, please stop and think of the damage you are doing to a potentially innocent person and also the damage you may be doing to the efforts of the police and the judiciary system in convicting someone who is guilty.

Online vigilantism is, in my opinion, worse than offline vigilantism if for no other reason than the size of the audience it can reach, proliferating the damage that can be done.

How long it will be before we start seeing the author’s of these posts themselves arrested and prosecuted for posting these images and statements is unknown, but I believe it will not be very far in the future.

Maybe an author of such a post will one day find themselves on the other side of both the metaphorical and physical lens, being accused of a crime they did not commit, feeling the wrath of the digital mob as their mugshot is circulated and shared without prejudice, all the while watching helplessly as harmful comments are made about them by strangers, purely based on how they look and the word of someone they do not know.

Is there a place for vigilantism on the internet? Is there a role it can play without the negative consequences? Or should the social media platforms and their users be doing more to combat and remove this style of online justice?