Back in the 50s snitches were called finks. If you were a fink nobody would play with you, talk to you, except to call you names, or have anything else to do with you. In my junior high, the best catcher in the school was a fink, and Coach had to cut him because the rest of us said we would quit the team rather than play on a team with him.
As the country became more totalitarian, government agencies, like the schools, welfare offices, social services, etc., promoted becoming a fink. Added to that push by the political class was the destruction of close knit neighborhoods. As the society became more mobile and people had less roots, being a fink lost its stigma.
It’s one thing to squeal on someone you’ve only known for a short time. It is a totally different thing to squeal on someone you’ve known since birth and your parents and grandparents grew up with his parents and grandparents.
Things are so sick today, people even squeal on relatives. I’ve heard of parents who turn their own kids in for shoplifting. Back in the 50s parents would smack the hell out of the kid and march his ass back to the store to return the goods. If they had called the cops instead, even the cops would have look on them as scum. Today, they tell the parents they did the right thing as they haul the kid off to be booked.
Did you bother to read the article?