In the last couple of days, the anger of Dalits against social media companies was evident in the form of tweets on Twitter against the unfair and discriminatory regulatory policies. Dalits put effort during the weekend and made 6 hashtags, from #CasteistTwitter to #ब्राह्मणवादीट्विटर, among the top trends in India.

The anger of Dalits against these social media companies is justified and long overdue.

Not only Twitter but all social media platforms in India are Casteist to its core. All these social media platforms need to develop policies to regulate content according to the local conditions and should have ‘caste’ clause in those policies.

Any caste abuse on social media should be handled effectively by these platforms but I know I am asking too much from these platforms. But in India caste abuse should be under their policies of regulation for sure. None should be allowed to use casteist abuse.

Janeudhari Twitter

Caste abuse on social media is a reality, most of the caste abuse on social media goes unreported and even if it is reported, social media platforms hardly take any action. This has to change and the first step would be that these platforms acknowledge that caste abuse is a big problem in India.

Under abuse policies, none of the social media platforms in India at present has mention of casteist abuse as an offence and it’s not surprising at all. When devising T&Cs, privacy and regulation policies none of these social media platforms has taken local issues in the account, it must change.

In almost last 10yrs on Twitter, I have heard almost all kinds of abuses what these so-called upper castes can come up with, in an attempt to chase me away from social media. So, from my personal experiences, I can say that Twitter is ruled by so-called upper castes who set the narrative and lead the discussion in any direction they want to.

With Dalits awakening to their rights and speaking against the oppression it is changing fast hence so-called upper castes in their attempts to keep a firm grip over the narrative on the social media platforms are trying different methods to silence Dalit voices, from posts being removed to banning Dalit-Bahujan accounts. It has become common practice that these social media companies are hugely influenced by the right-wing rulers in India. 

If these social media platforms want to stay unbiased, relevant and really want to provide a medium which most of the oppressed communities around the world are looking for, these platforms have to change the way they operate and handle the content. Abuse of minority communities on these social media must end and social media platforms should be held responsible for the content on their platforms.

Author – Pardeep Attri