‘We don’t let that happen.
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In Brazil, if you post a racist comment on social media, you might find that same comment splashed across a billboard and placed around your residence as a mark of public shame.
To drive that point home, a Brazilian civil-rights group named Criola has launched a campaign called, “Virtual racism, real consequences”, which takes racist comments from the Internet and posts them on actual billboards within the neighborhoods where the bigoted commenters reside.
Criola uses the geotagging feature that is on every post to identify the whereabouts of the commenter then blows-up their comments with the intention that they’ll know they can not hide behind the computer. The group seeks out bad tweets, finds out where it came from via the geolocation on twitter, and then gets a billboard space as near to the location as possible.
Criola’s founder Jurema Werneck told the BBC. While the shaming is in plain sight, naming isn’t with the poster’s name and picture blurred out.
‘We put on the streets real comments posted on Facebook against the journalist. If this “Virtual racism, real consequences” initiative can even combat racism a little bit, how far away is a similar movement from showing up in the United States? “We just want to educate people so that in future they think about the consequences before posting racist comments”, said the Racismo Virtual website.
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Whether or not this is an effective campaign remains to be seen, but it certainly does make you think twice about the next time you want to post something nasty online.
