PUBLISHED IN THE HINDU ON JULY 20, 2018
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(The Original Article)
We have come to witness the destructive power of social media, amplified by the advent of ubiquitous smartphones, unleashing havoc on innocent people. As the cases of lynching by mobs spread through the country, fueled by malicious videos on popular mobile messaging platforms that feed off on sheer ignorance of the masses, the obvious question that comes up is who is responsible for this?
The easiest mob mentality again is to find the most obvious entity in this value chain of
malicious videos being spread, and the lynch that entity. In this case, it being the mobile
messaging platform. Clearly, there is no doubt that the mobile messaging platforms are in a powerful position to make significant interventions to prevent such mob frenzies that are arising out of what the platform is facilitating to propagate to the masses. In fact, as good corporate citizens, it is the duty of the messaging platforms to step in and do their best to prevent such mob frenzies arising out of content being forwarded through such platforms, that is leading to gruesome lynching. However, the messaging platforms are only one actor in the value chain of malafide content being spread.
The value chain of malafide content being spread includes people who are creating such
content (and are clearly investing significant time and perhaps money), the mobile messaging platforms, the people who are forwarding such content, the people who are organizing the mobs and the enforcement authorities who are responsible for maintaining law and order.
Let us look at the first step in this value chain of spread of malafide content, which is the
content creator. This is not the first time that mob frenzy has been triggered in India through mobile messaging platform. The first such prominent case was the one that led to mass exodus of North-eastern origin folks from Bengaluru in the August of 2012. Much of the content that led to the exodus, was found to be of origin from a neighbouring country. Pretty much the same place of origin as one of the key videos on child kidnapping that has been circulating that led to many of the recent lynchings. Why did we have such a “Social Media attack” on Bengaluru and continue to have such “Social warfare” being carried out sporadically on India? Who would invest time and money to coordinate such an “attack”. Imagine the scenario where such Social Warfare is unleashed on our military itself. If an adversary is quickly learning how to spread Social Warfare from a city to the entire country, as the case is now, it is only a matter of time that the adversary’s next attack would be on institutions that would have far greater
destructive impact on the country. Is that too far-fetched? Has there been a precedence? Of
course there has been several such precedence in India itself, going back all the way to 1857, when rumours were spread that the cartridges being provided to Indian soldiers by the British is laced with cow and pig tallow. That sparked off the sepoy mutiny. The same can now be done far more efficiently using the digital instant messaging platform. So would it help if we onlyforce a single mobile messaging platform to take steps to stop the spread of malicious videos?
Yes it may help for now, but the forces that seem to be getting better at Social Warfare will use an alternate platform just as they started with MMS for the Bengaluru mass exodus and moved to mobile messaging.
We must also keep in mind that India is the only place in the world where mobile messaging has led to such widespread mass exodus and lynchings. Why hasn’t the same happened in other countries where revolutions have been triggered but not mob lynchings and mass exodus? Clearly, one of the reasons being that such behavior is being engineered by powers with vested interests that are detrimental for India. And clearly, the mobile phone game “Bluewhale” has demonstrated the ability for absolute mind control from remote locations, driving people towards destructive actions. But there is also the fact that we have a highly uneducated, under- exposed, gullible set of citizens with existing deep fissures and mistrusts. And this also includes those who are apparently highly educated and are doctors, lawyers, engineers and other professionals, but they fail to understand the power of technology where truth and untruth are hard to distinguish. This is a potent mix for targeted misinformation campaigns.
It is necessary for the government to urgently update the education curriculum to make citizens aware of not only such Social Warfare but also of other dangers such as phising, cyberbullying, cyber-blackmail etc. This is long overdue and previous attempts to create such curriculums through NCERT has not seen the light of the day.
Similar training is required for the enforcement authorities who also need to develop standard operating protocols to tackle such situations. Such a step needs to be reinforced by appropriate regulatory changes that makes it mandatory for entities in the value chain of information dissemination to share appropriate alerts with the law enforcement authorities, in a prescribed real-time electronic format. In the absence of such a regulation, information intermediaries can neither be triggered to act, nor be held illegal for any acts of omission on their part.
The current mob lynching triggered by mobile messaging is a wake-up call for India. We have earlier seen direct cyber-attacks that brought down ATM’s elsewhere and brought down a part of India’s electricity grid, that were recognized as test attacks. The mob lynching need to be viewed in the same lens and larger steps need to be taken to protect the nation and its people.
Jaijit Bhattacharya is president, Centre for Digital Economy Policy Research
