Troll Busters

They are an anonymous vigilante group on Twitter—a sort of a moral police for the moral police. Their motto: “Abusive Bhakts, your trigger-happy days are over.... We are watching you!” They call themselves The Bhakt Hunters (TBH), their handle @BhaktHunters, and their only aim is to report abusive accounts to Twitter India which violate the social networking platform’s guidelines. They have so far forced Twitter to block 71 accounts. It’s a guerilla-like cat and mouse game. If the blocked accounts resurface, TBH may report to Twitter all over again.

The Twitter space in India is coloured with venom and vitriol, with trolls ever ready with their torrents of abuse at those unwilling to abide by a particular ideology or view. For instance, recently there was a disturbing incident with the hashtag #IStandWithRituRathaur, which was trending across the country. One @RituRathaur was tweeting furiously, spreading communal poison. She (or he) posted the picture of a sub-ins­pector’s body, claiming that the UP policeman had been mowed down by Muslims when trying to stop a truck carrying beef. It got so bad that the UP police registered an FIR against the handle for spreading “baseless allegations/rumours on social media”.

This is the kind of handle The Bhakt Hunters would like to hound. Like they did with another handle in July. The group caught everyone’s attention when they reported and got the handle @MahaveerM temporarily blocked. The man with the account describes himself as ‘Hindu’, a believer in ‘Modinomics’, is followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Twitter account, and unfailingly hits out at anyone who says a word against the PM. The incident was noted when  Giriraj Singh, a BJP MP and a minister of state, tweeted in support of Mahaveer, asking Twitter to revoke the suspension. (Incidentally, Giriraj also lends support to Ritu Rathaur . “U can’t selectively target one person under anyone’s influence. I have seen this same news from thousands of accounts,” he tweeted against the FIR.)

The name Bhakt Hunters is a giveaway as to the kind of Twitter accounts the group targets. But who are these anonymous vigilantes cleaning up Twitter? The group has been tight-lip­ped about their identity, saying “it’s qui­ntessential to what our objectives are; the idea of Twitter itself is freedom of speech along with anonymity”. They have not spoken to the mainstream media and would like their work to be low-key. After much prodding, they reveal that they are a mosaic group of volunteers, “Indians by birth and Hindustanis by heart” who work both from within the country and overseas. They say the group has students, bankers, IT professionals, teachers, even a deep sea equipment expert. They are men and women aged between 20 and 40. They claim they do not subscribe to any political ideology, only abide by the Constitution, and uphold ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ values enshrined in it. “Our ideology also pertains to uph­olding the basic decorum of Twitter discourse in context with Indian polity,” they say in unison in an e-mail exchange.

TBH’s modus operandi is simple: to identify chronic abusers on the timelines of ‘politicians, journalists & eminent personalities’, a list of whom the group has compiled. The abusive handles are flagged and reported to Twitter, which then acts on the information in compliance with their policies. The group says that they “enjoy a high success rate in terms of suspensions, thanks to our ability to decipher these rules”, and pegs their success rate to between 20 and 30 per cent. TBH says that “it condemns the use of expletives and crass language by supporters of any ideology or cause”, as it believes “there has been a well-crafted and orchestrated attempt to muzzle voices of dissent by the ruling dispensation through some dedicated accounts....it is fairly evident that majority of these Twitter rowdies are aligned to the Right Wing Fringe ideology”.

Ideology aside, vulgar railing by certain handles has horrified many. Ravish Kumar, a journalist with NDTV, has had to stay off Twitter to avoid invective. Ano­ther senior journalist, Swati Cha­tu­rvedi, filed an FIR against anonymous Twitter handle @LutyensInsider last June. Cha­turvedi says that when the acc­­­ount started spreading canards about her stalking a Congress leader with spg pro­tection, she “laughed it off”. The sla­nder persisted though, and Chaturvedi says she felt “victimised by disgusting sex­­ual harassment”. At the end of her tether, she finally decided to report it to the police. While the average Indian male does receive his share of virulent abuse, the choicest sexist threats are res­­erved for women. The Bhakt Hunters could have helped her in blocking this handle.

Anju Kovacs, an activist with the Internet Democracy Project, agrees that while Twitter abuse knows no gen­der, women “get personal and serious abuse”. She adds that living in a patriarchal society doesn’t help. “Women face mistreatment of a different level and nature,” says Kovacs. A recent victim of Twitter trolls, Kavita Krishnan, secretary at the AIPWA (All India Progressive Women’s Assoc­ia­tion), may have her own political leanings. But does a differing opinion warrant such hate? “It creates a vicious atmosphere,” says Kavita. The slander was not a one-off case for her, as the CPI(ML) member is routinely bombarded with tweets every day, and receives her share of unsavoury comments on Facebook. “There are threats of violence, comments on my skin colour,” she says. Kavita is also in the habit of making public the most colourful abuse that comes her way, as it “exposes the politics of a bigoted lynch mob”. TBH is already on the lookout for serial abusers on the young activist’s timeline.

Nikhil Pahwa, founder of MediaNama, is pleased that a group like this has surfaced but adds that platforms like Facebook and Twitter have not done enough. “It is good to have data at the back-end but there should be strong processes in place to bring to task those who use anonymity to threaten rape and murder,” he says. Pahwa adds that Twitter in particular has not been very responsive in such matters. “When you do not act quickly, people will start migrating to a different platform”. Kovacs mentions that Facebook uses a mobile number for verification which is procured using legal documents. Intelligence services are thus supposed to have enough information at their disposal to thus place a face and a name on an anonymous account.

Ironically, it is this veil of anonymity that has helped TBH to go about its work discreetly. And yes, most accounts that TBH declares suspended have indeed stayed inactive. But the one that got them noticed, @MahaveerM, is also the one that got away. The account was active shortly after its initial suspension, and had a word or two to say about the issue at hand. “Mighty @ArvindKejriwal Gang & @timesofindia Presstitutes Backed @BhaktHunters Cudnt Suspend My AC Permanently. Chota Admi Chota hi Rahega,” Mahaveer tweeted on July 11. But TBH will not give up, and may report the handle again. After all, it’s on a mission of unrelenting pursuit.