Shaming debtors

“It just isn’t right for any private entity to make anyone a public figure, even if in the online world everyone is tragically a public figure and everyone is a target of public shaming.

A disturbing piece of news surfaced over the weekend. The news had to do with online lending companies collecting debts by engaging in the despicable bloodsport of public shaming.

As the latest example of online shaming, this incontestably unethical practice has resulted in devastating and long-lasting impact on people’s lives.

It is online because this particular form of shaming also involves the Internet, social media and, more often than not, is smartphone-fueled.

Thus, it all just takes a few seconds to call, upload and text an accusatory message, which in this case is a message for all the world to hear, see and read about a person’s inability to pay off a contracted debt.

It is a form of harassment used ostensibly for business purposes, which is alarming government.

Paying attention to the problem, the National Privacy Commission (NPC) says it has already received some 921 complaints since July 2018 about online lending companies publicly shaming borrowers to get them to pay up.

The NPC says it is closely watching these lending companies but have set their sights particularly on three notorious companies which they are about to haul to court.

NPC did not say when and where this nefarious practice started. But this outrageous practice of inviting an audience to join in the ridiculing and abusing of a borrower, the consequences of which often spill over not only into the victim’s personal life but may also even go so far as putting at risk a borrower’s job or work, is clearly dangerous.

After a series of investigations, the NPC says this “business practice specifically targets the privacy of persons, practically making a profit out of people’s fear of losing face and dignity.”

Monetizing public shaming is practically a new thing. But, as the NPC says, “These unethical practices simply have no place in a civilized society and must stop.”

How this business of online harassment works, how this form of cyberbullying mushrooming into a variant of social ostracism, seems to start from a simple matter of opening a smartphone app or clicking a Facebook advertisement.

According to the NPC, there are now more than 100 online lending companies in the country, which offer such loan services through mobile apps or on the Internet.

The amounts involved usually are just a few thousands of pesos and involve mostly borrowers of small amounts. It seems huge loans are not at issue here.

So, at first everything seems to be done for the convenience of the small-loan borrower in need of quick emergency loans.

But, as it often happens with any loan, inadvertent delays in payments do happen. It is then here where the convenience turns into a nightmare. And as the online harassment begins, it becomes a world where the power of humiliation is amplified and even becomes uncontained.

Hereafter, getting borrowers with overdue payments to settle their debts involves, as news report has it, “a strategy that involves threats and harassment through texts, phone calls, or online messages.”

How these notorious companies are able to get on with their harassment strategy using public shaming seems to be built-in with the requirement a borrower must allow these companies access to the borrower’s lists of contacts, usually family members, friends and co-workers.

According to the NPC, these companies then use these contact lists to disclose their clients’ inability to pay off his or her debt.

These companies also seem to have access to the borrower’s pictures and whereabouts. This has led to abuses like threatening to post risqué “selfies” on Facebook or changing Facebook profile pictures with obscene pictures.

And, as a news report makes clear, these companies are not easily intimidated.

Quoting a complaint against one company, a complainant allegedly received this message: “Before you sue us, we already (sent) a text blast to all of your contacts. We know your home address, your office and even your ugly face.”

I believe such threats qualify these companies as being heartless. It is as if they are taking psychic pleasure in seeing someone being brought low and humiliated.

At the same time, it just isn’t right for any private entity to make anyone a public figure, even if in the online world everyone is tragically a public figure and everyone is a target of public shaming.

But other than heartlessness, even more at issue here, in this trafficking of shame for business purposes, is what it does to people unnecessarily involved in the shaming — it makes innocent people desensitized.

Desensitized because, as is often with other cases of public shaming, these participants often face an accusation which has been made with little or no context.

So much so people just make a cold judgment about a person’s unpaid debts when the proper response should either be thoughtful or sympathetic.

The lurch to instant cold judgment comes because it is a fact of life most people do not have the tools to know the context or circumstances necessary to understand the complicated situation why a person needs to borrow money.

Yet, borrowing money is a normal human activity. People, for a host of personal reasons, do borrow money or take out loans.

A normal activity where I believe public shaming is not justly proportionate to the original offense of delayed loan payments.

The question, therefore, is: can these companies rightly escalate any form of social ostracism to make their work easier when they face the fact that under the law no one ever goes to jail for unpaid debts?

Absolutely not. Public uproar must bury this commercial version of public shaming.