Digital lynching deters nation's growth
India's digital landscape, which is the medium of passion for millions of Indians, has become the mortuary of human emotions. Those faces, covered in the poisonous veil of unfamiliarity, trolls have turned keyboards into guillotines. They are constantly spewing venom, which is squeezing the soul of the country. Who are the targets of these trolls? A bereaved widow, a cricket legend, a tennis star, a Bollywood celebrity, a commentator, and innumerable others. Trolling is a digital concern that violates privacy and leads to virtual lynching. Among those who have been or are falling prey to these trolls, one is a young widow. The terrorist attack in Pahalgam shattered his life. The terrorists killed her husband, who was a soldier, they had been married for a few days.
"We don't want to spread hatred against any community, we want peace and justice. The response was a flurry of cruelty. Someone wrote on X, "These are crocodile tears to grab the money that the martyr gets." Thousands of people liked this post. Another commented, "Your husband was a coward, it's good he is no more." It was shared on various social media platforms. Every re-tweet was a slap in the face of the widow's grief. Though Operation Sindoor provided quick justice, the reply given to the trolls was equally accurate when they said, "People who spread hatred have no right to live on this earth." ’
Earlier, even a cricket legend, who was once a symbol of Indian pride, had to go through a similar harrowing experience. The desperation of the 2023 World Cup took his life by storm. "Always desperate for selfies. When someone's post on him went viral, thousands of people commented on it, in the year 2022, a video of his hotel room was leaked, showing his personal belongings, on which people had fun. She had to comment on Instagram, "It is not right to violate my privacy" on which trolls mocked her. In 2021, trolls threatened to rape their little girl, saying, "Your child will pay the price for your failure." The post spread like wildfire on social media.
A tennis pioneer had to face constant taunts for marrying in Pakistan. In a post on social media in 2020, he was called a traitor who has sold himself to Pakistan. Despite raising her voice against the Pahalgam attack, the trolls did not spare her and said, 'Go to your husband's country', a woman associated with the game shared a picture of her newborn on social media, while someone made a cruel comment, 'Use the son for your fame'. This torture of people on social media is not sudden. It has been crafted, India's vast digital population has developed a heat-tolerant vessel in which hatred cooks, with algorithms that spread this hatred to more and more places. It gives preference to controversy and negativity over truth. The stock market's dividend can never reach the level at which the impact of its expansion is.
A 2023 study suggests that platforms like X and TikTok have significantly increased discrimination, with hateful posts reaching millions of people through bots and hashtag hijacking. It is digital lynching, or the crucifixion of people in public, in which the algorithm works to nail the shroud. The grief of a widow that appeared in the news media was hijacked by a troll carnival, and the caption, 'This woman is trading in sympathy', reached millions of people, exacerbating the cultural rot that sowed the seeds of discrimination and destroyed relations between communities. A martyred widow's call for peace was branded as 'appeasement' and communal hatred was fanned. The National Commission for Women (NCW) strongly condemned the targeting of her, but it did not deter the trolls. Celebrities quit these platforms due to trolls - Aamir Khan left it in 2021 calling it a 'poisonous investigation', while Sonakshi Sinha left it in 2020 as a platform for people who are 'sick of hate'.
The study suggests that trolling increases anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress, and most Indian users complain of mental stress. A credible digital content creator, who was trolled for a video, shared his ordeal, writing, "Hate ate my soul, I couldn't sleep for weeks. The Cyber Act of 2000 provides for penalties, but its implementation is lacking. After the Pahalgam attack, some foreign YouTube channels have been banned, but domestic trolls are roaming free. The 'Kulhad Pizza' duo (Sahaj Arora and Gurpreet Kaur) had to flee to the UK this year fearing constant trolling. Social media giants are making profits. X's global team fought foreign censorship this year on the basis of freedom of expression, but they are cut short by the hatred being spread domestically. All platforms that prioritize profits over ethics and ethics are partners in this sin. This digital lynching is the reason for the humiliation of India.
There are 378 million social media users in the country, of which 362.9 million are on Instagram and 25.4 million on X. They have made social media a slaughterhouse of human emotions, the government has to do something. There is an urgent need for a strong cyber law. India has to curb this digital malevolence, silence this algorithm of hate.
(This is the author's personal opinion)