Abstract
Widespread dissemination of hate speech on corporate social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube has necessitated technological companies to moderate content on their platforms. At the receiving end of these content moderation efforts are supporters of right-wing populist parties, who have gained notoriety for harassing journalists, spreading disinformation, and vilifying liberal activists. In recent months, several prominent right-wing figures across the world were removed from social media - a phenomenon also known as ‘deplatforming’- for violating platform policies. Prominent among such right-wing groups are online supporters of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India, who have begun accusing corporate social media of pursuing a ‘liberal agenda’ and ‘curtailing free speech.’ In response to deplatforming, the BJP-led Government of India has aggressively promoted and embraced Koo, an indigenously developed social media platform. This commentary examines the implications of this alternative social platform for the online communicative environment in the Indian public sphere.
The opportunity structures for holding public representatives accountable and creating space for open public dialogue have led some scholars to conclude that social platforms have taken on the ‘Fifth Estate role’ (Bouvier & Rosenbaum, 2020, p. 4). A decade ago, scholars articulated hyper-optimistic views of corporate social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, as platforms that democratized public communication and brought new political voices into our civic sphere. It was argued that the features offered by these social networking sites had the potential, particularly in countries that were under authoritarian regimes, to alter the balance of power and trigger a positive sociopolitical change. For example, the use of Twitter by anti-government activists in the Middle East during the Arab Spring entrenched this widespread belief that social media were powerful tools in promoting digital democracy. Cyber-utopians even demanded a Nobel Peace Prize for Twitter for the platform’s ability to globalize protest movements and galvanize public support for democratic causes (Pfeifle, 2009). In the United States, Barack Obama effectively used social media in his 2008 presidential campaign to motivate younger voters to get involved, politically. Obama’s social media messaging, widely considered one of the most successful social media campaigns in U.S. political history, had led to a substantial increase in the number of young voters not only volunteering for political activities but also in donating money to the election campaign.
However, the optimism of social media’s role in positively transforming public communication was short-lived. Populist actors and nativist movements, including white supremacists, Islamophobes, right-wing nationalists and extremist groups, have swarmed these platforms to advance their narrow political agenda. Technological affordances such as lower communication barriers, anonymity and the potential for reaching unknown audiences have enabled such groups to easily distribute propaganda to millions of users, spread disinformation, mobilize support for their causes, recruit new members and connect with like-minded people living in geographically disparate locations. Unmediated communication offered by these platforms allowed them to troll and harass activists, journalists and political opponents—often vitiating online public discourse. Corporate social media companies, responding to calls for curtailing hate speech, have initiated new policies which sought to remove such harmful content from their platforms. Widely known as ‘deplatforming’, the practice of removing individuals from social media for violation of its rules and policies has led to tensions between right-wing populist parties and corporate social media across the world. Indeed, enforcement of such policies has led to the social media ban of several right-wing figures in the U.S., including former president Donald Trump.
In the US, arguing that the social platforms were practicing a ‘communist-style censorship’, Republicans have called for regulating the ‘big-tech’. 1 In Nigeria, the government has indefinitely suspended Twitter after the platform deleted an offensive tweet from President Muhammadu Buhari. Such tensions are now apparent in India, where supporters of the ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have accused corporate social media of censoring their views. In recent years, online Hindu nationalists also referred to as ‘Internet Hindus’, 2 have gained notoriety for harassing journalists perceived to be critical of the Narendra Modi led BJP government, trolling political adversaries and celebrities who are opposed to the Hindutva ideology, spreading fake news and disinformation through doctored videos and photographs, and posting offensive content against Muslims and other religious minorities. Many of these online Hindu nationalists are urban-dwelling, tech-savvy youth who use social platforms as avenues for ‘self-expressivity and online sociality among ideological compatriots’ (Udupa, 2018, p. 456). An estimated 100,000 online Hindu nationalists are said to be active on multiple social platforms, constantly defending the Modi government’s policies and launching a coordinated campaign against those who oppose the BJP (Chaturvedi, 2016). In fact, international media watchdog ‘Reporters without Borders’ has included these ‘Internet Hindus’ in the 2020 list of 20 digital predators for their online intimidation of journalists (RSF, 2020).
Understandably, the discursive practices of right-wing actors in India violate the community standards and policies of corporate social media companies, which broadly define hate speech as content that contains dehumanizing speech, harmful stereotypes, expressions of contempt, disgust or dismissal, cursing, and calls for exclusion. 3 Despite such violations, social media companies have taken no action on right-wing user accounts in India for fear of angering the BJP government, which could damage their business prospects. For instance, according to a report published in the Wall Street Journal, Facebook had opposed applying its own anti-hate speech rules and policies to BJP politicians and other Hindu nationalist groups and individuals, although several of their posts were ‘flagged internally for promoting violence’ (Horwitz & Purnell, 2020). Even in rare cases when social media companies act, accounts violating their policies are only penalized with the withdrawal of verified account status or restricting their access to the platform for a few hours. Platforms like Twitter simply added ‘manipulated media’ tags to right-wing tweets that spread conspiracy theories or misinformation.
Despite such lenience, right-wing groups affiliated with the BJP have accused social media companies of ‘left-wing bias’. Citing the removal of Donald Trump from social media, Hindu nationalists allege that a similar strategy is being implemented in India to deplatform Narendra Modi and his supporters (Sharma, 2020). Such negative perceptions of corporate social media are also widely spread by the emerging right-wing --press in India, including news portals such as OpIndia.com; television networks like Republic TV and Times Now; and online right-wing influencers. The belief that corporate social networks are opposed to the BJP and are ‘anti-Hindu’ is so well-entrenched among right-wing circles that several BJP politicians have called for an investigation of the platforms for curbing ‘free speech’ and ‘silencing’ their voices.
The Emergence of Alternative Social Platform: Koo
The notion that corporate social media, including Facebook and Twitter, have a ‘left-liberal bias’ has led to the Hindu-nationalist embrace of an alternative social platform—Koo. Launched in March 2020 by a Bengaluru-based tech start-up, this microblogging service is considered an Indian alternative to Twitter. With an expressed aim to ‘empower people to express their thoughts in Indian languages with a strong knit local Indian community’, Koo has explicitly positioned itself as an online space designed to meet the communication needs of Indians. Several cabinet ministers and senior officials of the Modi government have opened their accounts on this platform—lending credence to the reports that the Government of India was promoting Koo as a counterforce to the Silicon Valley-based social media companies. In February 2021, following a long stand-off with Twitter over the platform’s refusal to remove anti-government tweets and hashtags posted by activists and farmers, the Government of India decided to make Koo its primary means for social media communication.
According to a news report, the Modi administration decided to share important press releases, government-related updates and announcements first on Koo. Such explicit endorsement by the BJP government and pro-BJP media organizations has led to a substantial increase in the number of users. In particular, many supporters of the BJP and Narendra Modi opened their accounts on the platform. As of August 2021, Koo has over 10 million registered users, which the platform believes will reach 100 million users by the end of 2022.
Journalistic accounts of the discursive practices on Koo contend that the platform appears to be a right-wing ‘echo chamber’ where topics such as national pride, anti-Islamic rhetoric and conspiracy theories are freely discussed. One such news report concludes:
Venturing into the app was like an alternative reality where certain users got their wish to ban voices that they disagreed with from Twitter. It is as if you are speaking, and every single person in the room is nodding. No one disagrees, and everything is shiny and beautiful on this Truman show. (John, 2021)
Similarly, a preliminary study by researchers at the University of Michigan has shown that hashtags with appeals to nativism and nationalism, vilification of Twitter, and pro-BJP discourse characterize the discourse on Koo (Arya et al., 2021). Arguably, since Koo is populated mainly by right-wing supporters of the BJP where users have identical political views, it represents what Pariser (2011) calls a ‘filter bubble’. In these bubbles, users shut out opposing viewpoints, pre-select consonant media and repeat their fundamental beliefs for a largely homogenous group of people, leading to further radicalization of their views (Rogers, 2020). Scholars have long argued that such communication can increase the polarization of opinions, erode mutual trust and diminish opportunities for meaningful public debate of civic issues (Sunstein, 2007).
The Global Rise of Alternative Social Media
Right-wing populists in many parts of the world have long accused corporate social media of being hostile to their ideas and views. Conservative forces strongly articulate these accusations in the U.S., particularly after the removal of Donald Trump and other prominent right-wing actors from social media in January 2021. While Trump was deplatformed for ‘inciting violence’, which led to an attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters, conservatives called his removal an ‘unprecedented assault on free speech’. Further, Republicans alleged that corporate social media were purging conservative views and curtailing their right to express their thoughts by manipulating algorithms that govern the display and flow of information online. This widely articulated belief has led to the establishment of several alternative social media sites, which promise limited content moderation. Prominent among such platforms are Gab, Parler, BitChute, MeWe and GETTR.
Attempts to create parallel spaces for online deliberation elicited strong support from various strands of the American Right. Articulating the need to create social media sites that are based on conservative principles, a contributor wrote in National Review:
There are no neutral spaces, and there never will be. Whether the forum is public or private, certain people are going to be in charge, and they’re going to impose certain parameters. The goal should not be to create neutral spaces; it should be to create non-neutral spaces more attractive than existing non-neutral spaces. That is the success story of conservative media. National Review in the world of print, Fox News in the world of television, and the Drudge Report online carved out spaces that were not in the least neutral, but which handled their ‘prejudices’ in a way that was more attractive than the alternatives. (Tuttle, 2016)
However, this trend is not confined to the U.S. or India. In Europe, ‘anti-censorship platforms’ have become favourite digital avenues for supporters of the far-right ideology. Among such social media are Albicla—Poland’s alternative to Facebook and Hundub—Hungarian Right’s social media space (Schultheis, 2021). A common notion that underpins the creation of these right-wing alternative social media across the world is that corporate social platforms are pro-liberal. Highlighting the ‘hypocrisy’ and ‘double standards’ of corporate social media, they question why these platforms allow the ‘world’s most dangerous voices’ to continue posting content while banning democratically elected right-wing politicians from their platforms.
It is noteworthy that these anti-social media sentiments are identical to right-wing allegations made against the mainstream news media and professional journalists. Arguing that the institutional media had a ‘liberal bias’, right-wing populist actors set up their newspapers, magazines, television networks, radio stations and websites. In India, Hindu nationalists have long held the belief that the country’s English language press is ‘anti-Hindu’, ‘elitist’, ‘corrupt’ and ‘anti-BJP’. To counteract this so called bias, BJP supporters launched their own websites and television networks, which attempt to skew the public debate sharply to the Right (Bhat & Chadha, 2020). These right-wing media have become highly influential actors in shaping the public discourse, challenging mainstream journalistic discourse, and formulating right-wing views and ideas.
Now, similar efforts are underway to establish alternative social platforms, as evidenced by the launch of Koo. These alternative media offer parallel discursive spaces for right-wing supporters to reconnect with their networks, mobilize support and devise strategies to counter political opponents without the fear of their posts being removed or accounts suspended.
However, constant exposure to like-minded views with limited scope for disagreement or debate can cultivate what scholars have called ‘homophily’, which is a tendency of ‘similar individuals to form ties with each other’ (Colleoni et al., 2014, p. 318). Such an information environment could lead to the further polarization of political views or ‘balkanization’ of the public sphere (Sunstein, 2007, p. 59) and contribute to the ‘difficulty of consensus’ (Levendusky, 2013, p. 612) in politics.
The Conundrum of Content Moderation
Corporate social media companies depend on advertising as well as data generated by their users for their revenue. Hate speech and abusive content on their platforms can dissuade advertisers who may not like their product or brand being associated with such content. These economic imperatives force social media firms to moderate content posted by users worldwide, including Hindu nationalists in India. In addition to these financial pressures, the need to respond to civil rights groups, journalists, activists, and shareholders about steps taken to curb harmful content on their platforms necessitates corporate social media to take up content moderation.
At the same time, unlike in the U.S., where social media companies enjoy extensive freedom to frame and execute their content moderation policies, in India, the government mandates these companies to address its takedown requests of what it deems unlawful, misleading, or violent content within a 24-hour notice period. According to the new information technology (IT) rules brought by the Modi government, social media companies are also required to publish a monthly compliance report that discloses the number of grievances they have received from the users and the actions taken to address them. With 530 million WhatsApp users, 448 million YouTube users, 410 million people using Facebook and 17.5 million using Twitter, India remains one of the world’s biggest markets for corporate social media companies (Kaur, 2021). Unwilling to comply with the government rules, coupled with antagonizing the ruling BJP leadership, could adversely affect their business prospects in the country. Also, India’s colonial experience makes Silicon Valley-based tech companies more susceptible to allegations of ‘foreign powers’ and ‘Western companies’ imposing their values on Indian society. Therefore, corporate social media are faced with the complex task of balancing between protecting free speech and preventing hateful content without opposing the BJP government.
For Hindu nationalists, mainstream social media are extremely crucial for the success of their political project. Corporate social platforms offer them greater visibility, allow them to reach new audiences and gain mainstream media attention. They provide an opportunity to circumvent the traditional media and directly contact potential voters. Further, unlike alternative social platforms like Koo, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are well-embedded in a broader information and communication environment, making it easier to diffuse their right-wing ideas. Therefore, despite new alternatives, Hindu nationalist supporters of the BJP cannot completely do away with mainstream social media. Besides, banning social media companies could negatively affect the country’s global image. Hence, the promotion of Koo and the anti-social media rhetoric espoused by Hindu nationalists must be viewed simply as a pressure tactic employed to force mainstream social media to overlook their abusive, hateful and offensive content posted on their platforms.
Overall, the current tensions between right-wing populist actors and corporate social media both in India and other countries highlight the nature of the complex relationship between technology companies and populist forces. Ultimately, political pressures and economic vulnerabilities faced by both sides will most likely shape the nature of their future relationship.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.