Reclaim the internet to empower, not exploit

The Supreme Court's move on April 28, to examine obscenity regulations for OTT platforms and social media (in a PIL filed by Uday Mahurkar and others) is both urgent and necessary.

- SRINIVAS MADHAV

However, the harm caused by each differs significantly: while OTT content typically involves willing actors and accountable creators, social media platforms enable the non-consensual sharing of images and videos of innocent individuals, often by anonymous or untraceable users who evade accountability. This makes social media a far more potent tool for privacy violations and direct harm, frequently facilitating crimes against unsuspecting victims.

In Varanasi, a 19-year-old woman was allegedly taken to a hotel by an accused who raped her and recorded a video. This video was then used as leverage; she was reportedly told to stay in the hotel, or the video would be circulated on social media. This threat allegedly led to her being subsequently gang-raped by 22 others over the course of a week.

This is just one example of cases involving a terrifying modus operandi: perpetrators not only assault victims but also film the act and use the threat of sharing these videos on social media to silence them and evade legal consequences. This exploitation of technology—smartphones, the internet and social media platforms—constitutes a new and dangerous form of abuse—Technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV). Non-consensual dissemination of objectionable images and videos of women and girls (image-based abuse) is becoming a crime more severe than sexual harassment itself. An iron fist must be brought down on this modus operandi to prevent such crimes.

Role of Social Media Platforms: Platforms like YouTube have developed the capability to detect and remove objectionable videos even as they are being uploaded, using advanced AI tools and human oversight. Proactive detection of harmful content is technically feasible and already in practice.