This episode of Black Mirror was much closer to our reality than "Be Right Back"in my opinion. The filming murder of the little girl and the constant filming of Victoria's punishment has striking parallels to the Facebook live beating of the disabled man in Chicago, Steve Stephens streamed murder of an innocent elderly man, and numerous videos of people being beat up on Worldstar Hip-Hop. All these actions mirror Victoria's crime of videoing the torture of the little girl before the start of the episode. This new technology allows anyone and everyone to broadcast whatever they are doing live to the world and gives the deranged and evil the ability to showcase their crimes. My question is how do we prevent these people from being able to use these platforms in this way without violating the privacy of those doing nothing wrong and is the punishment given to Victoria justified and applicable in our society.
I personally see no way to effectively prevent people from broadcasting heinous acts live for all to see besides having them stream on a delay with complete and total surveillance to make sure no illegal activities are taking place. This however is problematic because it completely erases the privacy of those not doing illegal acts in their streams. Is it worth it to give up your privacy in order to know someone isn't broadcasting a brutal murder all to see? I'm not too sure on that because I'm paranoid.
I also do not believe the White Bear Park style of punishment would fly over very well in real life. I don't believe most mentally stable people would line up to see the Facebook Live attackers from Chicago be regularly beaten and tortured or to see Steve Stephens relive the same day with themes from his murders sprinkled throughout an enclosure eventually leading to a climax inside a fake McDonald's. In real life punishments such as these would be seen as cruel and unusual. We can't go back to using some dystopian form of Hammurabi's Code because at that point we are only committing a state sanctioned version of the same crime.
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