By B S Murthy
@murthybs
Ever seen the world’s biggest democratic government go apeshit & deploy its entire communication ecosystem to counter & slander for tweets by four ladies who are non-Indian? , it just happened in India in the first week of February. What can possibly rattle a government with a big majority and a weak opposition?
4 ladies, Rihanna, Greta Thunberg, Meena harris & mia khalifa dominated the news consumption the entire first week of February in India. A mere one-line tweet asking their followers to talk about farmers protest via hashtag #farmersprotest ignited the entire right-wing social media ecosystem into making crass, sexist & life threats to the 4 ladies exposing to the whole world now what only Indian women on social media used to face.
Within hours of tweets by these 4 ladies , predictably Modi government wheeled in hoards of cricketers, the entire bollyhood (almost) & senior artists like lata mangeshkar was made to tweet the lines parroted by the government . One more instance where Indians are in awe the extent of control Modi government has over celebrities in India . Sachin tendulkar & lata mangeshkar , both recipients of the highest civilian award the ‘Bharat ratna ended up as trolls parroting the government narrative about propaganda against India followed up by the entire indian cricket team parroting the same lines . nowhere in any democracy you would see the entire current generation of film celebrities , artists , sportsmen behave like paid trolls for the government .
The ugly paid face of the Indian right-wing BJP IT cell ecosystem run by the BJP party was there for the whole world to see. Today the BJP IT cell is the most powerful trolling force in the entire social media ecosystem & WhatsApp messaging in the world, virtually millions of them go live on-call to troll, abuse, give gang rape threats, acid attack threats, particularly on women who oppose them politically or ideologically. The trolls for hire tweet with full protection from the government from any kind of legal or punitive action. This is a dangerously motivating force that needs to be put to an end like yesterday.
A major reason for this monster to exist has been the callous attitude shown by all social media majors including Facebook, Twitter & Whatsapp. Every threat, unrest, lynching done in India using social media & WhatsApp, the onus lies with the platforms keeping quiet or not taking down the postings’ or the messages in time using algorithms. The government even threatened Twitter with notice of penalizing & jailing the executives if they don’t fall in line by deleting the list of Twitter accounts given by the government.
The Indian social media ecosystem & WhatsApp platform is a different animal altogether to understand compared to any other country across the globe. the social media giants have either ignored the emerging threat to society via WhatsApp forwards & messages which were responsible for lynching’s across north India earlier. Modi government has paid these social media giants humungous sums of money utilizing the platforms for rumor-mongering & fake news in all the elections since 2014 both local & central elections, in fact, the mainstay of Modi governments core people engagement is now WhatsApp & social media.
What makes these millions of trolls go berserk & be a part of coordinated abuse & slander should be a research study across all key universities of the world, the negative outcomes of social media & damage to society it causes surely warrant a deeper study. Facebook, Twitter & Whatsapp needs to be held accountable for their callous attitude in taking out the accounts of abusers & protect the innocent from online abuse across the world. These are the primary tools used by demagogues’ across the globe to set fake narratives, target & abuse any opposition.
Algorithms can do the job of taking out abusive posts or messages, but platforms use them selectively or make them available for the highest bidder. It is time we have a social media / messaging policy across the globe that protects people from unknown abusive trolls.
