Editorial: Of trigger warnings, and death threats

Social media has been abuzz over the past few days following a recent incident involving a woman stand-up comic named Agrima Joshua, who had been threatened with sexual violence and assault by a few men after a video of a specific comedic sketch performed by her in 2019 ruffled the sensibilities of some individuals. The routine in question concerned the depiction of a historical king in a public forum.

While India’s track record of defending its citizens’ right to freedom of speech might be questionable at best, what emerged in the course of this development was the impunity with which an individual can dare to issue a rape or an assault threat online against a woman, and possibly even get away with it. In Joshua’s case, it was not one, but three men who intimidated her with the threat of sexual assault, while hurling obscenities at her. In fact, the online vitriol only got worse, despite Joshua having apologised for her remarks and subsequently having taken down her video.

The spillover of the incident was seen even offline where an auditorium in Khar was vandalised as it had hosted the performance by Joshua. What shook the confidence of many netizens was the fact that the individuals who had issued the rape threat had done so without fear of any consequence, and they weren’t even brought to book until a massive online movement mobilised via hashtags and retweets on Twitter, brought the attention of law enforcement officials to the fact that a woman was being threatened with sexual violence on a public platform. The incident raises pertinent questions concerning the nature of cyber laws and more specifically, law enforcement in cyberspace

In February this year, the Ministry of Electronics and IT had forwarded its new draft to the law ministry for vetting. This draft had a proposal which said content related to terrorism and child pornography posted online should be weeded out by built-in automated technology tools such as filters. Apart from these electronic aids, there is a parallel industry of professionals employed in the content moderation hubs of social media companies, that spends thousands of man-hours every week deleting offensive images and videos from such sites.

Presently, trigger warnings and masked previews have become the mainstay of social media pages, owing to the proliferation of content pertaining to human and animal abuse, terrorism, hate speech, and false propaganda. However, it is surprising that there are no filters for something as public as the comments section on social media - anyone is free to use objectionable words, language, issue threats without being checked or blocked.

It is imperative that social media platforms incorporate flagging mechanisms and algorithms that can judiciously recognise objectionable content – or in this case, specific threats of assault and rape, shut them down, and report them to the authorities concerned, before they empower more miscreants to follow suit. A Rajya Sabha panel chaired by the Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, had in fact, recommended changes to the IT Act, keeping in mind such emerging threats. This panel had placed the onus both on ISPs as well as search engines – to detect, block, and report such objectionable content. Putting such safeguarding measures in place can go a long way in keeping the internet a safe space – for users and for free speech and self-expression.