India, a country with 1.3 billion people where the whole population is stratified in layers and layers of caste, religion, gender, region, class, skin color, language and so on. From this diverse population, there are around 34 million users of Twitter in India.

People join social media to express themselves, their opinions. When a person from the oppressed community, Dalits, Advasis, Women, OBCs, Minorities, Transgender people, when that person joins social media, he/she brings his/her whole social hierarchical background on it unknowingly. The way our society is divided, in the same fashion you will find our social media platforms are divided as well. Those who are facing discrimination in their day-to-day life, have to face the same discrimination on these media platforms too.

Unlike everyday hashtag tends on twitter run/sponsored by the trolls of IT-Cells, on 2^nd November, twitter India saw three hashtags trending on the list.

1. #SackManishMaheshwari
2. #CasteistTwitter
3. #JaiBhimTwitter

It was as if twitter was taken hostage by Bahujans throughout the day. Activist, journalist Prof. Dilip Mandal’s twitter account was taken down last Friday citing a stupid reason. In response, thousands of users tweeted #RestoreDilipMandal. Late-night that day, his account was restored. This is not new, a few days back eminent lawyer Sanjay Hegde’s account was suspended. Same happened with the Hansraj Meena, Tejaswi Tabhane, and still happening with many Bahujan, Ambedkarite handles, getting suspended or blocked.

Twitter trying to silence the dissent by curbing and restricting the free voices on its platform. As a protest against the Managing Director of Twitter India, Manish Maheshwari, for targeting the certain set of activists, lawyers, journalists, influential users who constantly speak for the oppressed community, or critical to the current regime in power, users tweeted under the hashtag #sackManishMaheshwari.

Twitter has verified ‘special’ handles on their first day of joining. Jay Shah has a blue tick on his handle with zero tweets and 7 followers. We have also seen verified handles spreading/supporting hate speech, explaining the benefits of drinking cow’s piss and eating Gobar. On the other hand, Important Dalit leaders like, Prakash Ambedkar, Chandrashekhar Azad don’t have their handles verified. The question arises, how many Dalits, SCs, STs, OBCs handles twitter have verified? (Prof. Dilip Mandal’s handle was verified the next day on 3^rd Oct). Does that mean having Janeyu is the eligibility criteria for getting twitter handle verified? Is this not discrimination? In response to this, I think, Bahujans should keep trending #CasteistTwitter on a daily basis.

Two weeks ago, India witnessed extremely disturbing trending topics on twitter. Among the most popular was #मुस्लिमो_का_संपूर्ण_बहिष्कार, meaning ‘total boycott of Muslims’. Twitter allowed it to trend for hours, no actions were taken on anyone. Many of the accounts posting these tweets are followed by the ministers of the BJP Government. By not stopping this from trending for hours and not taking action on such hate-mongering handles, makes it clear that twitter also supports this, this islamophobia. Is this what Twitter calls ‘being impartial’?

Women, transgender persons, Dalits, Muslims, STs, have to go through enormous trolling on a daily basis on Twitter, what twitter is doing about it? Nothing! In a country diverse like this, are these general terms and rules of the twitter enough to control and stop hate speech and trolling? How many representatives of the Minorities and oppressed community are on the Twitter India’s table? What is the policy of Twitter on caste-based discrimination on the platform?  These are the serious questions to which Twitter have to respond in the near future.

Last year on 2^nd October 2018, a Saudi Arabian dissident author, a columnist for The Washington Post, Jamal Khashoggi, who was critical of the Saudi Arabia’s crown Prince King Mohammad bin Salman, was assassinated at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Reports suggest that there were huge organised troll armies working in Saudi Arabia for intimidating and targeting hate against Khashoggi. Saudi Government tasked personnel for influencing opinions on twitter through hundreds of real or automated fake accounts or bots. Just like we have organised troll armies of IT Cells affiliated with a ruling party here in India. In the documentary ‘The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia’ by Frontline, Deborah Amos saying “the entire landscape of twitter was shifting in Saudi Arabia from this open platform where people felt comfortable to express opinions to that was more like instrument of oppression”. That’s what is happening here in India. Saudi government allegedly used Israeli spyware (NSO Group’s) Pegasus to hack his cell phone before his assassination. If you noticed, this is the same spyware that WhatsApp confirmed was snooping on 121 Indians, including Dalit activists, journalists, lawyers, academics.

Saudi Arabia is the perfect illustration of how authoritarian government can manipulate social media to silence or down out critical voices while spreading their own version of the truth. Do we want to take Saudi Arabia as a role model for social liberty and freedom? As a nation, do we want to become a surveillance state from a democratic one?

What we want. Firstly, we want such ignorant, casteist MD to be sacked by Twitter. We want Twitter India to be inclusive. It should appoint representatives of the different communities (caste, religion, gender, region) on its decision-making table. Important/influential SC, ST, OBC, Minorities twitter handles should be verified immediately, not because it’s important, but it’s discriminating of twitter to verify only to those certain set of people’s handles and deliberately excluding handles of Bahujans. Set certain eligibility criteria for it. Set up a separate system to address caste-based discrimination on the platform. “Trending” on twitter should be shut down, to put it in Casey Newton’s words, “At best, it’s worthless — and at worst, it’s actively harmful”. Sanjay Hegde suggested legal way to tackle hate speech and targetting individual handles to suppress dissent under ‘hate speech’, “Maybe, it might make sense to move to a model where these online platforms regulate hate speech only when asked to do so by the law enforcement authorities” responding in interview with The Print after his twitter account was suspended.

I should end this with a famous quote from the movie Spiderman “With great power comes great responsibility” and Twitter should better realize this.

Author – Prashant Bhaware