In the past few months, Instagram has seen a rise in its share of justice-demanding posts. Survivors of heinous crimes—varying from verbal abuse, bullying, and sexual harassment—demanding justice have come to light and acted as a catalyst in building will power. Moreover, recognition of such crimes has actually led to legal action against the culprits.
While such incidents are privy to ‘viral fever’ online, and are being expeditiously shared and posted on everyone’s ‘stories’, there arises a constant chagrin among people. Instagram has deleted their posts and blocked their stories, thus, putting a halt to the ‘exposure’ of the crime and the culprit. A common “Way to go Instagram” jibe is doing the rounds.
It boils down to certain questions: Why is Instagram blocking posts? Why is Instagram biased?
You may have seen much more provoking and volatile content float on your feed or know about this content existing. However, what people forget is that Instagram is not a living, breathing mortal identity holding grudges against a few people and hence blocking their content from being posted. Here comes the ironic reality of Gen Z users of Instagram—they may know all about the newest updates on the app but have turned a blind eye to its community guidelines which plays an important part in content moderation. It is one of the major reasons for Instagram’s usage flexibility across age groups.
Instagram’s guidelines prohibit content shared “to support or praise terrorism, organized crime, or hate groups“. The Community Guidelines of the platform say: “We remove content that contains credible threats or hate speech, content that targets private individuals to degrade or shame them, personal information meant to blackmail or harass someone, and repeated unwanted messages. We do generally allow stronger conversation around people who are featured in the news or have a large public audience due to their profession or chosen activities.”
An eye-opener for the users isn’t it? The question that thus arises is about the already existing content which hasn’t been removed by Instagram. If it has not been removed, it does not mean it belongs there or should be allowed to exist.
Certain individuals who post unhealthy content, and therefore, adds Instagram, “[e]ncouraging or urging people to embrace self-injury [which] is counter to this environment of support, and we’ll remove it or disable accounts if it’s reported to us. We may also remove content identifying victims or survivors of self-injury if the content targets them for attack or humor.”
These guidelines, which now may seem unfair to its users, should really kick-start the users’ ideas about the rationality of posting such content. Is a defamatory post the only way to bring along justice in this society? Is the act of putting up a video of the culprit the only way of obtaining a legal action or an additional tool to contribute to their declining shame and sprout hatred towards them?
What should be taken into account by the ones who propagate the content exposing the absurdity of the society? “What will be the consequences of my actions in the present or future for another person?” is a question users must ask themselves before following the herd of enraged propagators.
In a recent case of Sandeep Khumbharkar, the 38-year-old man who flashed a woman inside an ATM booth, several videos of the incident recorded by the woman were shared online. However, even though she had suffered through this disgraceful act, the consent of the users (who may not have wanted to see the video) wasn’t taken into consideration.
It is not the woman’s fault for spreading the word about such incidents. Instead, such acts have only contributed in more people opening up about their experiences, taking a step towards fixing what went wrong. But the need to understand the responsibility which comes with such freedom of expression should also be thought of by all the users.
In the end, it is the users who are shaping the community, and not the technology, and enabling them to connect to one another. If anything audacious is seen circulating , it is the viewer’s responsibility to report it. There are legal routes and people present on the internet who are there to guide survivors and help them obtain justice without having to propagate the post which concludes with starting a hate community. The noble intentions of a user who has been a survivor of injustice thus takes a contrasting turn.
Therefore, we need to constantly keep on learning and approaching things with rationality. Because even the smallest of actions can be of great significance when it comes to social media.