March 29, 2024

Cyber police end ‘successful’ project that took on trolls

0

Cyber police end ‘successful’ project that took on trolls

60% fall in cases of cyber-bullying and defamation, say police

Two-month ‘experimental project’ of targeting trolls directly achieved its purpose of spreading awareness, believes state cyber department; over 500 offenders deleted their posts


The state’s cyber police have discontinued its project which took on trolls by directly reaching them through their inboxes and social media profiles. The reason for ending the crackdown on hurtful and defamatory posts, according to the police, is because it was an ‘experimental project’ that had met its objective of spreading awareness among netizens.

Through the project that was launched on May 20, the Maharashtra Cyber Department (MCD) had managed to get authors of over 500 hurtful or defamatory posts to delete the content on their own, notching up a big success in the fight against trolling and cyber-bullying and attracting inquiries from other states, with Punjab starting a similar drive according to sources, on how this was achieved.

MCD would serve the “offender” a notice under Section 149. It could be in an inbox, it could be on a timeline, or a direct message. The idea was to let the person know that what he is doing is unlawful and if he does not take corrective measure, he would land in trouble. While the project’s figures are being collated, as per initial figures, 518 posts had been ‘self-deleted’, marking a success rate of 53.5 per cent of the total 968 posts it was following since May 20.


Mirror’s report on July 7 on the MCD’s project to target trolls

Mirror’s report on July 7 on the MCD’s project to target trolls

Over 2,468 questionable posts had been under the scanner. The police’s drive against cyber-bullying and trolling was under Section 149 of the CrPC (Criminal Procedure Code), which empowers a police officer to “intervene for the purpose of preventing the commission of any cognizable offence”.

According to MCD’s Special Inspector General Yashasvi Yadav, incidents of hate speech and trolling have come down by 60 per cent due to the project. “Having achieved its purpose, through this experimental project, Maharashtra Cyber is now discontinuing the Section-149 notices project executed on an experimental basis. The project achieved the target of achieving 500 self-deletions by authors of hurtful/hate/defamatory/malicious posts,” Yadav said. Other MCD sources said that thanks to the impact of the project, it is expected that the citizens will “continue to cooperate” with MCD by not indulging in trolling/defamatory posts.

Among the 968 authors of objectionable posts who received MCD notices were an individual who, using a pseudonym, put an “extremely offensive post on Facebook about a Hindu deity” and another who morphed Mahatma Gandhi’s photograph in a “demeaning way”, the source said. In both cases, the posts were removed within hours of notices being posted. Just days later, both users also deactivated their accounts.

Through the project, the police had changed its approach from seeking to control the menace through social media platforms where the objectionable material was posted, to establishing direct contact with their authors.

Dealing with the Facebooks, Twitters and You-Tubes of the world to get a post/video removed used to take months and in many cases the platforms would refuse to remove the content citing their privacy regulations as also the fact that their servers were located in other countries. But getting in touch with the “offenders” directly had worked out to be a more practical solution. “Once we reached their inboxes, they knew the law has caught up with them’’, said a source.

Published at Sun, 02 Aug 2020 17:49:00 +0000

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *