Social media gives a voice to the voiceless, a way to speak up and hit back at perceived injustice. But sometimes, says writer and filmmaker Jon Ronson, things go too far.
TED TALK VIDEO: When Online Shaming Spirals Out Of Control
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“The great thing about social media was how it gave a voice to voiceless people,” Ronson said. “But now we are now to creating a surveillance society where the smartest way to survive is to go back to being voiceless. Let’s not do that.”
In an eye-opening story of how one un-funny tweet ruined a woman’s life and career, Ronson shows how online commenters can end up behaving like a baying mob — and says it’s time to rethink how we interact online.
“I think the very best thing we can do, if you see a kind of unfair or an ambiguous shaming, is to speak up, because I think the worst thing that happened to Justine [Sacco] was that nobody supported her — like, everyone was against her, and that is profoundly traumatizing, to be told by tens of thousands of people that you need to get out. But if a shaming happens and there’s a babble of voices, like in a democracy, where people are discussing it, I think that’s much less damaging.”
Ronson concludes that the way forward to speak out to stop the shaming.
To read more about this TED TALK, click here.
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