From cheating exposure to dating background checks, Tiktok detectives are thriving
Take the infamous Andy Byron of coldplay concert as an example, multiple articles asked “Who is his wife?” and guessed his family. As 404 Media wrote, the event “symbolizes our current private surveillance and social media hell,” and Tiktok commenters are using facial recognition tools to identify random people online.
“I think humiliation is an extension to the flow of algorithms toward extremism,” Cohen said. “The internet normalizes as content goes on, which means that any extreme must continue to become more extreme… We are also living in a time of perceived violations where real criminal investigations and humiliation look like justice, albeit amateurs, night watchers justice.”
User electronic_gur_843 wrote on Reddit in 2023, “Open Explosion on the Internet” to appeal for suggestions “error”.
“It was a traumatic experience that led to me being torn off by thousands of people. It was in me because of this mistake, but it was blown up too. I don’t want to reveal too much, but I can assure you that there aren’t enough illegal or bad things to think of me as a “bad guy”. I’m just young/naive internet power that stirs up some drama.”
They said their Google scores showed up on “article pages” about them, adding that the entire experience made them “severely frustrated”.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 17% of teenagers are cyberbullyed, while 9.5% have made serious suicide attempts, which as of 2023 means putting strangers’ business in a primary situation can lead to real and sometimes devastating.
“The purpose of public humiliation is to hold people accountable for their actions, or be considered offensive,” Fox Hamilton said. Fox Hamilton added that this is often to build a society where everyone steps. However, this mentality also means that if something bad happens to someone, such as being caught cheating online and giving your family to a stranger, we are more likely to be blamed for our belief that they are worth it.
Ironically, Fox Hamilton said: “People who have this belief in the just world are generally more likely to publicly humiliate or jump on the trend with something like this because they think ‘you did a bad thing, it’s your fault and I’m not responsible for anything bad that happens here.”
There is another slippery when we start regulating people based on our morals and assumptions. In response to the scandal of the Coldplay concert, right-wing influencer Matt Walsh wrote on X: “One of my most unpopular (but still correct) opinions is that adultery should be a criminal offence against both parties involved.” It is not difficult to imagine how to apply this logic to women trapped in abusive marriage or people who do not identify with monogamy.
When the target is a public figure, like the CEO, the audience may feel more justified when it comes to offense.
“There are a lot of problems happening in the world right now, and I think for some people, Andy Byron represents that in a symbolic way,” Fox Hamilton said.
Whether they post videos of the case or post active surveillance, the PI interviewed by Wired said they were cautiously covering up their faces and any identifiable landmarks to protect the identity and location of the defendant and plaintiff. In Stephanie’s case, she sometimes goes a step further and re-crafts the video case, which is a step to ensure client confidentiality. Neither their customers nor their client partners are online.
Allen-Stell agrees that the public can take things too far – describing the Coldplay Show Altout as a “witch hunt.”
“What put people in charge at first was the movement that turned into public humiliation,” she said. “It was reckless. The internet is not a court, and random users are not investigators.”
