Justice—it is something that all humans unanimously desire. We are taught to look to our government and legal system to seek it. But what if the injustice we seek legal reprimand for is too small of a crime for police to occupy their time with?
The emergence of social media has brought about a controversial practice of people gaining what they think to be “justice”: online shaming.
On Sept. 16th, Dunn’s Famous Deli, a local eatery in the ByWard Market, posted a video on their Facebook page of a group of customers dining and dashing. The short clip appears to show a group of five people entering the restaurant, eating their meal, then leaving without paying, which burdened the management with a $77 unpaid bill. According to a CBC article on the incident, dining and dashing costs the restaurant around $200 a month.
Shaming someone or a group of people online is a very dangerous route to take for a number of reasons. As law professor Joanne St. Lewis points out in the CBC article, “There can be unforeseen consequences down the road…particularly if not everyone captured in the video was part of the crime.”
St. Lewis raises an important point. With posting things online, there is no burden of proof that needs to be passed before that “share” button can be utilized. With this lack of a burden, posting things on social media with the intent to shame someone or a group of people is walking into unchartered territory. Taking Dunn’s case as an example, since we cannot be sure that each person in the group of five was part of the crime, or even the reasoning behind why they left without paying, it was wrong to post the video.
As youth, we sometimes make bad decisions. But that does not mean every young person deserves a permanent negative record on the internet, especially as students are coming into university at a younger age than they ever have before. It would be almost ludicrous for a first-year student in the threshold of adult life to have their face plastered all over social media because they decided to take part in petty theft with some friends. Now, I am not condoning theft in any respects, no matter how small the amount. But in the same breath, I do not condone a restaurant’s decision to shame the person publicly.
In my view, the management at Dunn’s acted out of sheer emotion rather than rationale. I sympathize with the fact that they do not get much help from the police with a crime so small in comparison to other crimes in Ottawa, but the decision to post the video was unprofessional and unnecessary. Dunn’s should have simply written off the bill as a cost of doing business, then should have sat down to think of ways to prevent this in the future.
The bottom line is that theft will always be a reality for every business. Whether it is a small mom and pop shop or a retail giant like Walmart, every business has to deal with stealing. But if every store or restaurant were to post surveillance videos of people stealing onto social media, many lives and reputations would be severely damaged for a long time. I think there are many other ways businesses can tackle theft, one of which is beefing up their security.
All in all, as handy as the click of a button can be, we should refrain from online public shaming because of one simple fact: we just don’t know everyone’s story.
