Online shaming is a form of public shaming in which targets are publicly humiliated on the internet, via social media platforms, or more localized media. As online shaming frequently involves exposing private information on the Internet, the ethics of public humiliation has been a source of debate over internet privacy and media ethics. Online shaming takes many forms, including call-outs, cancellation, doxing, negative reviews, and revenge porn.
Online shaming has been characterized as the equivalent of flogging in the town square.
Public humiliation or public shaming is a form of punishment whose main feature is dishonoring or disgracing a person, usually an offender or a prisoner, especially in a public place. It was regularly used as a form of judicially sanctioned punishment in previous centuries, and is still practiced by different means in the modern era.
South Korean gang leader Lee Jung-jae being shame-paraded by Park Chung Hee's military regime (1961).
Pillories were a common form of punishment.
Paris, 1944: French women accused of collaboration with Nazis had their heads shaved and were paraded through the streets barefoot.
Public foot whipping in Iran