Cold response to troll control mechanism

New Delhi: A hue and cry has been raised over trolling of Delhi University student Gurmeher Kaur with many people coming out in her support. But a mechanism to counter such online trolling of women launched by the government has seen very little response with a mere 60 women putting in complaints since July last year.

The initiative #Iambeingtrolled was started by women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi with much fanfare in July 2016. As per this system, a woman, who is being trolled, has to just send an e-mail to register a complaint and the matter is then taken up with Twitter, Facebook or other social media platforms.

However, since July till date, only 60 complaints have been received against online stalking, abuse on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, e-mail and WhatsApp.

Out of these 60 complaints, 27 are related to Facebook and 17 are related to Twitter, all actionable complaints are sent to the concerned authorities for appropriate action, a senior official of the women and child development ministry told this newspaper.

The ministry has also held a meeting recently with Twitter team India to examine issues related to abuse, harassment and hateful conduct on Twitter. The Twitter team informed about their grievance redressal procedure and brought into focus further options to help the complainants creating a safe cyber space. “The team has also informed us that in case the complaints are of very serious nature, Twitter will also block the accounts of the trollers,” the official said in cases of criminal nature the victims are advised to go to the police. Under the mechanism, women can complain to a dedicated e-mail ID which has been solely created to address and resolve the issues of hateful conduct and stalking on social media platforms. The complainant is first asked whether they have filed any FIR or have reported the offense to the concerned social media platform, if not, then the links to do so are provided to the complainant in the mail. Subsequently, in most cases, an auto-generated complaint reference number is sent to the complainant’s registered e-mail address by the social media platform, which the complainant is suggested to share with the ministry for future reference. If the social media platform or the police fail to respond within seven days, then the ministry intervenes, asking for an update or Action Taken Report in the matter with the authorities.