The industrialisation of public humiliation

Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975) never fails to provoke a reaction among sociology of law students, and I see their expressions change as we discuss the public executions that Foucault describes so vividly.

Punishment was once a spectacle. It was carried out in village squares before cheering crowds. Bodies were broken in public. Humiliation was part of the sentence. The crowd watched, judged and enjoyed the performance.

Students invariably see this as something that belonged to a darker, less civilised age. We comfort ourselves with the belief that society has evolved. That we have left those spectacles of cruelty behind.

But have we?

For more than four decades, we have championed information technology, digital skills and, more recently, artificial intelligence. We believe that technology should expand human potential, strengthen democracy and improve lives.

What worries me today is what else we have chosen to do with technology.

The internet has transformed our world for the better in countless ways. It has democratised access to information, opened extraordinary opportunities for learning and innovation, connected families across continents and given millions of people a voice they never had before.

Yet, it has also transformed public humiliation. It has made it instantaneous, global and permanent.

Foucault observed that public executions were never simply about punishing the condemned and serving as a deterrent to others. They were also about the crowd. People gathered to watch. They jeered and took sides. Punishment became theatre.

Reading those passages today, I cannot help wondering whether we have recreated that theatre in digital form.

One post with an allegation and, within hours, thousands of people can join the condemnation of someone they have never met and know almost nothing about. Outrage spreads with astonishing speed. But so does something less noble: the unmistakable pleasure that some people seem to derive from watching another human being publicly humiliated.

We have become strangely tolerant of cruelty on our phones.

A rumour can be invented in seconds. A lie can circle the country before breakfast. A reputation built over decades can be destroyed in an afternoon by people who know neither the facts nor the individual concerned. By the time the truth catches up, the damage has already been done.

And, somehow, we have convinced ourselves that this is simply the price of free speech. It is not.

What begins as “just a comment” quickly becomes something else: cyberbullying; cyberstalking; defamation; character assassination disguised as accountability. A digital mob convinced of its own righteousness.

A disturbing part is that moral outrage and entertainment have become intertwined. We tell ourselves we are defending values. Too often, we are simply enjoying the spectacle.

Psychologists have warned us for years about the consequences. Anxiety, depression, isolation. Sometimes, in the most tragic cases, suicide.

Then, when someone finally breaks under the weight of it all, we suddenly rediscover our compassion. We flood social media with condolences. “Rest in peace”. “So tragic”. “So sad”. And the insufferable “rest easy”.

Do we ever ask whether we helped create the conditions that made the tragedy possible?

There is a big difference between protecting freedom of expression and protecting abuse.

We have become strangely tolerant of cruelty on our phones- Helena Dalli

Freedom of expression is one of the foundations of every democratic society. It allows us to criticise governments, expose corruption, challenge power and express unpopular opinions without fear.

But freedom of expression has never meant freedom from responsibility. Rights and responsibilities have always travelled together.

You may not knowingly destroy another person’s reputation with falsehoods and call it free speech or relentlessly harass another human being because you are protected by anonymity, or strip someone of their dignity and then hide behind the language of liberty.

The same principles apply to journalism. A free press is indispensable to democracy and, of course, deserves our strongest protection. But journalism without evidence is not journalism.

Publishing allegations that cannot be substantiated is not investigative reporting. Destroying someone’s reputation without evidence simply is not serving the public interest.

Clicks are not evidence and going viral is not validation. Being first is meaningless if you are wrong.

Perhaps the greatest danger posed by social media is that it has collapsed the distinction between allegation and guilt.

Democratic societies spent centuries building legal systems based on due process, evidence and the presumption of innocence.

Online, that sequence is often reversed. First there’s the allegation, then the outrage, followed by public condemnation. Only afterwards, if ever, do the facts emerge.

That is digital vigilantism, not justice.

The EU directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence adopted in 2024 criminalises specific forms of cyber violence, including cyberstalking, the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, cyber harassment and the online incitement to violence or hatred directed against women.

Malta has also recognised that online abuse can no longer be dismissed as “just words”. The decision to criminalise cyberstalking and other forms of serious online abuse is an important step in acknowledging the real harm that can be inflicted in the digital sphere.

But legislation, necessary though it is, will never be sufficient on its own. Laws can prohibit bad conduct. They cannot, by themselves, change culture or teach empathy.

If we are serious about making the digital world safer, we must go further.

We need a national conversation about digital rights and digital responsibilities. We need stronger accountability from digital platforms and accessible support and remedies for victims.

We need journalism that remains fearless but also rigorous and ethical.

And we need digital ethics to become part of education, not only for children but for adults too. Technology alone will never determine the kind of society we become. People will.

Artificial intelligence, faster processors and powerful algorithms are great inventions but the greatest innovation in any civilisation has always been our ability to recognise the dignity of another human being.

Foucault reminded us that systems of punishment evolve. Their methods change. Their theatres change. But the moral questions remain the same.

We like to believe that public spectacles of punishment belong to history. The uncomfortable truth is that they have not disappeared. They have simply become faster, bigger and infinitely more permanent.

The village square has become global.  Unlike the village square of centuries past, the crowd never goes home. And every one of us now carries it in our pocket.

H

Helena Dalli is a former European commissioner and Labour cabinet member.