New Delhi

05 November 2019 18:18 IST

Activists say the immediate trigger for the campaign was Twitter’s abrupt decision to restrict the handle of Dilip Mandal, academic, journalist and author who champions social justice causes online

Accused of promoting and condoning caste discrimination and hierarchy, social medial platform Twitter is in the eye of a storm as a campaign against it by Dalit, OBC and tribal activists and their supporters has been trending on the platform since Saturday.

On Tuesday, #TwitterHatesSCSTOBCMuslims was among the top trends and on Monday, it was #JaiBheemJaiMandalJaiBirsa — denoting a coalition of Dalits, OBCs and Tribals hailing Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, B.P. Mandal of Mandal Commission fame, and Birsa Munda, tribal freedom fighter. Campaigners have trended #CasteistTwitter, #JaiBhimTwitter and #SackManishMaheswari since Saturday. Manish Maheshwari is the managing director of Twitter India.

Meanwhile, another hashtag #TwitterParRajHinduKa — Hindus rule Twitter — had begun to trend by Tuesday afternoon.

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Activists say the immediate trigger for the campaign was Twitter’s abrupt decision to restrict the handle of Dilip Mandal, academic, journalist and author who champions social justice causes online. Mr. Mandal told The Hindu that his account was disabled by Twitter on Friday, alleging privacy violation. “In March this year, I had tweeted about a booklet titled Bahujan Agenda including the contact details of the author. The author had explicitly given me permission to tweet his contacts, but Twitter cited that as a violation of rules and restricted my account,” he said. Social justice activists started a campaign #restoreDilipMandal and when it began trending, Twitter restored the account on Saturday. The platform also verified Mr. Mandal’s account.

Question of verification

Mr. Mandal, who has since called for removing the verification tick from his handle, said through this process, Twitter was mirroring the Varna system, authenticating the voice of some and silencing others.

“Verified handles spew venom against Dalits, tribals, OBCs and Muslims and the company does not act. It shuts down accounts that call for ending discrimination. Anecdotal evidence suggest that this is caste bias and religious prejudice,” he said. Twitter campaigners against the company point out that it has not verified the accounts of film director Pa Ranjith — who has more than eight lakh followers — Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi leader Prakash Ambedkar and Bheem Army leader Chandra Shekhar Aazad and a host of other vocal proponents of lower caste rights. “We would like to know whether Twitter has any criteria for verifying an account or is it arbitrary as it appears,” said Mr. Mandal. “Twitter has the power to mould and influence public opinion. I have no empirical data, but it clearly smacks of caste and communal prejudice on the part of the company.” Campaigners have put the spotlight on several other accounts to drive home the point that there is some unstated and underlying bias in the verification process.

Replying to queries sent, a Twitter spokesperson said, the company has one set of rules and it enforces them “judiciously and impartially for all individuals — regardless of their political beliefs, religious ideology, professional position or background.”

“We have ongoing efforts to provide local market context when developing and enforcing our global policies. We extensively cover gender and religion (including caste) in our trainings, to provide reviewers with the local context they need to evaluate content. Our policy prohibits behaviour that targets individuals based on protected categories (including caste),” the spokesperson added. On the issue of verification, the Twitter spokesperson said the public verification process is currently closed. “However, on a case-by-case basis we do verify people who are active in the public conversation on Twitter.”