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PMO India, President of India : Stop Online Mobs
Simrann K.
started this petition to
PMO India, President of India
STOP ONLINE MOBS
PROTEST DATE &colon 30 July VENUE &colon Jantar Mantar New Delhi TIME &colon 12&dash5pm
This petition is regarding the extreme "troll culture" that has become a daily part of conversations online today. It is assumed that when you take to the internet to express yourself, you must be ready to laugh off death threats, sexual harassment, rape threats and lynching threats.
What about the basic principles that have been enshrined in the one basic ground norm of our country, our constitution&quest The Constitution guarantees Prohibition Against Discrimination under Article 14 and also guarantees the Right to Life and personal liberty. All these incidents which boil down to cyber bullying or online mob culture, are an infringement of our basic rights. Though there are certain provision of IPC (Section 499, 503, 507, 354&dashA, 354&dashD) and 66E of IT ACT, but upto what extent do they actually guarantee protection against all these violations&quest
Not only celebrities and public figures, the common man has also become inured to incessant trolling just for saying something that disturbs the comfortable stance of another.
The Global Youth Online Behaviour Survey conducted by Microsoft ranked India third in cyberbullying &dash A virtual offence with very real consequences. Hate mails, online gang wars, fake profiles and digitally&dashaltered photographs are abound on the web with perpetrators "out for blood". Nothing facilitates the game of one&dashupmanship like the internet because the easiest way to get back at someone is online, almost always under an alias.
On the complaint of a woman television journalist, Delhi Police registered an FIR in June'15 against a conspicuous though anonymous Twitter handle. Swati Chaturvedi alleged the handle belonged to a senior journalist who heaped sexual abuse on her and harassed her online, goading his 40,000 odd followers also to troll her. Social media has given people a platform to air their views but it has also left them vulnerable to slander, character assassination, intimidation and defamation. Till March 2015, the government used Section 66A of the Information Technology Act as the remedy for all online abuse, but the Supreme Court struck it off from the law books. The apex court found the section to be not just “vaguely worded“ but also in violation of the Constitution since it criminalized speech on the subjective annoyance of a user. SC further faulted the provision for creating a new offence only on the basis of the medium used for communication. Does this then mean that an important weapon against online abuse has been taken away by the SC&quest
Being part of a country known for its pluralism and the Right to Freedom of Speech & Expression, we believe this is one thing that needs to be seriously countered. The problem arises from a lot of factors, including immense hate and negating rooms for open conversation, to peer pressure. However, troll culture is something that has begun to be talked about. Talking about some other serious incidents, Gurmehar Kaur was infamously trolled for issuing a statement online condemning violence, Simran Keshwani was met with the same fate on an article that talked of the historicity of vigilantism in India. They were openly given murder threats and sexually explicit abuses, which in the online world were "not serious, only words". Even after reporting the trolls to Facebook, their IDs remained unsuspended as Facebook did not find open threats as a violation of Community Guidelines.
Needless to say the trolls had to be endured with and ultimately ignored. But, that did not stop the conversation from coming to the forefront. A lot of mainstream media and news channels have examined the Troll Problem, and have found that it is a lack of viable laws and control that embolden people to exhibit worst kinds of behaviour behind the screen.
It is in vain to extenuate the matter. People may cry, peace,peace &dash but there isn't any peace. The struggle has actually begun. We need to act now. We would like to emphasise that our petition aims to &colon&dash
1. Firstly, clearly define that we are against Murder Threats, Lynching Threats and Rape Threats and would like legislation on the same. We uphold the Freedom of Speech in the highest regard and would like to clarify that disagreements over the web do not constitute violent threats, neither are we advocation an infringement on a person's right to express themselves online.
2. Secondly, we demand fasttracks of these reports and a Separate Centre/Helpline for Online Reports against Cyber Harassment and Threats. Most of the complaints registered online are not acted upon immediately and there is little awareness regarding legal recourse. Reports made take days to be looked into, and almost always amount to minor warnings to the perpetrators. We demand stricter punishment / a complete ban from social media sites for repeat offenders.
3. More discussions on Troll Culture using NGO networks that could conduct Seminars in schools and for the media to actively report these cases. Many a times these cases are dismissed as "too normal" to be sensationalised.
4. We demand better accountability and moderation from social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter. Currently, making fake accounts that issue such threats is rather easy. Moreover, the moderation process on Facebook is far too arbitrary. At best, it only gets those comments deleted. We demand that social media companies improve their moderation, act on complaints in a specified time frame, and report legitimate instances of rape and death threats to law enforcement directly. This not only protects the victim but also makes it easier for the police to act faster as social media firms have access to the perpetrators details like IP addresses etc.
We will be actively campaigning under the name Stop Online Mobs till the authorities react.
PROTEST DATE &colon 30 July VENUE &colon Jantar Mantar New Delhi TIME &colon 12&dash5pm
This petition is regarding the extreme "troll culture" that has become a daily part of conversations online today. It is assumed that when you take to the internet to express yourself, you must be ready to laugh off death threats, sexual harassment, rape threats and lynching threats.
What about the basic principles that have been enshrined in the one basic ground norm of our country, our constitution&quest The Constitution guarantees Prohibition Against Discrimination under Article 14 and also guarantees the Right to Life and personal liberty. All these incidents which boil down to cyber bullying or online mob culture, are an infringement of our basic rights. Though there are certain provision of IPC (Section 499, 503, 507, 354&dashA, 354&dashD) and 66E of IT ACT, but upto what extent do they actually guarantee protection against all these violations&quest
Not only celebrities and public figures, the common man has also become inured to incessant trolling just for saying something that disturbs the comfortable stance of another.
The Global Youth Online Behaviour Survey conducted by Microsoft ranked India third in cyberbullying &dash A virtual offence with very real consequences. Hate mails, online gang wars, fake profiles and digitally&dashaltered photographs are abound on the web with perpetrators "out for blood". Nothing facilitates the game of one&dashupmanship like the internet because the easiest way to get back at someone is online, almost always under an alias.
On the complaint of a woman television journalist, Delhi Police registered an FIR in June'15 against a conspicuous though anonymous Twitter handle. Swati Chaturvedi alleged the handle belonged to a senior journalist who heaped sexual abuse on her and harassed her online, goading his 40,000 odd followers also to troll her. Social media has given people a platform to air their views but it has also left them vulnerable to slander, character assassination, intimidation and defamation. Till March 2015, the government used Section 66A of the Information Technology Act as the remedy for all online abuse, but the Supreme Court struck it off from the law books. The apex court found the section to be not just “vaguely worded“ but also in violation of the Constitution since it criminalized speech on the subjective annoyance of a user. SC further faulted the provision for creating a new offence only on the basis of the medium used for communication. Does this then mean that an important weapon against online abuse has been taken away by the SC&quest
Being part of a country known for its pluralism and the Right to Freedom of Speech & Expression, we believe this is one thing that needs to be seriously countered. The problem arises from a lot of factors, including immense hate and negating rooms for open conversation, to peer pressure. However, troll culture is something that has begun to be talked about. Talking about some other serious incidents, Gurmehar Kaur was infamously trolled for issuing a statement online condemning violence, Simran Keshwani was met with the same fate on an article that talked of the historicity of vigilantism in India. They were openly given murder threats and sexually explicit abuses, which in the online world were "not serious, only words". Even after reporting the trolls to Facebook, their IDs remained unsuspended as Facebook did not find open threats as a violation of Community Guidelines.
Needless to say the trolls had to be endured with and ultimately ignored. But, that did not stop the conversation from coming to the forefront. A lot of mainstream media and news channels have examined the Troll Problem, and have found that it is a lack of viable laws and control that embolden people to exhibit worst kinds of behaviour behind the screen.
It is in vain to extenuate the matter. People may cry, peace,peace &dash but there isn't any peace. The struggle has actually begun. We need to act now. We would like to emphasise that our petition aims to &colon&dash
1. Firstly, clearly define that we are against Murder Threats, Lynching Threats and Rape Threats and would like legislation on the same. We uphold the Freedom of Speech in the highest regard and would like to clarify that disagreements over the web do not constitute violent threats, neither are we advocation an infringement on a person's right to express themselves online.
2. Secondly, we demand fasttracks of these reports and a Separate Centre/Helpline for Online Reports against Cyber Harassment and Threats. Most of the complaints registered online are not acted upon immediately and there is little awareness regarding legal recourse. Reports made take days to be looked into, and almost always amount to minor warnings to the perpetrators. We demand stricter punishment / a complete ban from social media sites for repeat offenders.
3. More discussions on Troll Culture using NGO networks that could conduct Seminars in schools and for the media to actively report these cases. Many a times these cases are dismissed as "too normal" to be sensationalised.
4. We demand better accountability and moderation from social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter. Currently, making fake accounts that issue such threats is rather easy. Moreover, the moderation process on Facebook is far too arbitrary. At best, it only gets those comments deleted. We demand that social media companies improve their moderation, act on complaints in a specified time frame, and report legitimate instances of rape and death threats to law enforcement directly. This not only protects the victim but also makes it easier for the police to act faster as social media firms have access to the perpetrators details like IP addresses etc.
We will be actively campaigning under the name Stop Online Mobs till the authorities react.
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