Mob Justice in the Age of Social Media

-- By SarahSchnorrenberg - 09 Mar 2017

In recent years, incidents of mob justice have vastly increased, but in a new, more insidious form than the traditional small town mob with pitchforks. As it becomes ever more omnipresent, social media has allowed the natural societal tendency towards mob justice to transform into a far more dangerous weapon that jeopardizes actual justice.

Crowdsourcing Justice

Theoretically, social media should not be a roadblock to justice. As our notions of justice should reflect the whole community, outlets like Twitter could help by allowing everyone’s voice to be heard. For instance, the Black Lives Matter movement has been able to bring attention to often marginalized perspectives via social media. But the intersection of social media and social action is not always so organized or so effective, and it can have deleterious effects on the legal law enforcement system.

In a world of instant gratification, people seem to expect the same of justice. But why wait the months or years it may take for law enforcement to bring people to justice when you can ruin someone’s life in a moment? For instance, after the Boston bombing, a group on Reddit decided that, despite their complete lack of experience or credentials, they needed to find the perpetrator and find him immediately. This led to a large internet witch-hunt in which they arbitrarily decided, off of circular logic and no evidence, that Sunil Tripathi was responsible. He wasn’t. But this didn’t stop his bereaved family from facing serious harassment.

This isn't anything new

The public has always had a say in how justice is delivered. Jury trials have played a huge role in the American legal system, considering the constitutional right to a jury trial. Juries allow the law to take into account public opinion, and make sure the community has a say in who gets punished. This is not to say juries are always perfect. Humans are flawed, and juries have always reflected the biases and limits of those who make up the jury.

Just as today, the justice system has not always exactly matched with public perception of justice, and the general public has meted out their own form of justice before. History is replete with groups like the Ku Klux Klan or various mafias, that have decided that the law does not enforce their values, and took matters into their own hands, typically with violent mob killings. The law evolved to combat these activities. By passing laws regarding hate crimes and prosecuting people for the results of mob action, the traditional manner of mob justice has drastically decreased since.

Social media intensifies faults in the legal system

Social media has endowed the public with new powers, allowing them to realize their notions of justice in ways beyond simply killing or maiming. Take, for instance, Justine Sacco. A few years ago, she tweeted a few stupid jokes before boarding a plane. Hours later, she got off the plane and turned on her phone to find herself fired from her job and ostracized from the world after Twitter completely incensed about one of her tasteless jokes. Twitter had gone into a frenzy, spitting mad at this woman they had never met. But it didn’t matter that they didn’t know her—countless strangers had decided to make themselves judge, jury, and executioner.

Unlike the past, when controversial criminal cases were for the most part confined to local communities, a case like that of Casey Anthony or Brock Turner can become national news in the course of a few minutes. Simply because of the ease with which news spreads today, a person can glean their entire knowledge of a criminal case via tweets written after reading just a headline. Then, incensed after reading a hive-mind of ill-informed tweets, a person may proceed to write their own angry tweets and potentially try and get a person fired or otherwise ruined. Because action over social media is instant, no one has to slow down and think. No one has to consider things like due process or innocence until proven guilty. The traditional restraints on mob justice are severely weakened.

Dangers of harnessing this phenomenon

The biggest effect that social media has had on mob justice is that it is far easier for people to manipulate this trend to suit their own purposes. While it is likely that people have always deployed mobs to their own selfish purposes, it has become far easier for people to do so with social media.

One must only look abroad to see how social media “justice” can be harnessed for injustice. Foreign governments have used “troll armies” to achieve their own goals. Most notably, Russia interfered in the U.S. election this way. Russians pretended to be Trump supporters online, spreading misinformation that incensed many Americans. People who tried to expose them were doxed and harassed.

The Pizzagate scandal also provides a horrifying glimpse into the power of these internet mobs. A conspiracy theory quickly snowballed, and a large swathe of people were convinced that a D.C. pizza parlor hosted a child prostitution ring for Democrat leaders. Eventually, a man decided to get justice and drove hours to D.C. in order to threaten the employees of the restaurant with an assault rifle. When anyone can direct and influence the public’s passions to achieve their own ends, incidents like Pizzagate become far more alarming.

What can be done?

Ultimately, the law will have to adapt to modern circumstances just like it adapted to stop lynchings and traditional mob justice. The added wrinkle, of course, is how quickly social media adapts, and the difficulty any legislature will have with dealing with these problems in real time. It is not clear how a law could prevent these drastic outcomes without inhibiting the benefits conferred by social media, nor is would it be easy for Congress to pass any bill regulating Internet use. But we must at least start to offset this phenomenon by acknowledging it.

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