HYDERABAD: Online trolling has been a bitter reality for women for a long time. Recently, comedian Agrima Joshua received rape threats on social media for her political views. Creepy direct messages, unsolicited photos and sexually coloured comments have become the norm for women influencers and celebrities. These remarks have the potential to affect the mental and emotional health of a person, but any effort to fight the trolls is generally dismissed by, ‘ignore them’. However, a few women are now standing up to their online abusers with the campaign ‘#IgnoreNoMoreOnline’.
Malini Agarwal, founder of MissMalini Entertainment, started the movement by urging women to report the trolls. In Hyderabad, influencers like Priyanka Mallik are supporting the social media campaign. She says: “We receive hundreds of sleazy DMs including pornographic clips and pictures and our natural instinct is to block them and move on. But it does affect us and we need to speak up, shame them and maybe try to understand how people (men or women) think that they can get away by sending hate messages, abuses or porn.
I happened to attend a live session, hosted by a well-known celebrity couple and the comment section was brutal with men as young as 14-year-olds commenting on the woman yoga (Ashka Goradia) instructor’s body.” People lending their support to the campaign include Shweta Salve, Nitin Mirani, Aashka Goradia, Faye Dsouza, Rohit Roy, Shibani Kashyap, Manasi Scott and others.
In Mumbai, the cybercrime police has been involved in the campaign, and the victims have been tagging a cybercrime cop in their complaints. Online users from Hyderabad are looking forward to a similar response from the city’s cybercrime cell too.
How to file complaint?
Collect virtual evidence like the screenshots of the comments, direct messages and other content that constitutes harassment. Mention the user names of the harassers and their profile links. You can lodge an anonymous complaint on cybercrime.gov.in
Telangana Police has launched a campaign called CybHER.in to make the virtual world a safe place for women and children. This ongoing initiative will end on August 4. The campaign features live sessions, informative videos, flyers, modules, surveys, polls, Fact Fridays and a bunch of competitions like poster making, comic strip, article writing and video making. The campaign will in detail provide a mechanism where the target audience will not only understand and learn about the offences or about cyber awareness, but will also be given ample interactive material so that they carry this forward even after the month-long practice has subsided.
How to join in
There are many activists online across websites, blogs and social media who often discuss these in their Twitter chats or in live session where they get many voices who share their experience and also experts who can suggest social and legal recourse for such issues.
— Kakoli Mukherjee
kakoli_mukherjee@newindianexpress.co
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