By Inji Pennu
Isha Ishika, a university student in the southern Indian state ofKerala,was threatened a few days ago by members of a Facebook group calledKerala Cyber Warriors.
TheMalayalam-speaking group of predominantly male members says that it aims toprotect Indians online, especially Malayalee women, by hacking into pages where explicit imagesand content related to sexuality are shared.
They describetheir activities on their group page, saying that they seek to expose people and preserve the honor of Malayalee women. They claim to have hackedPakistan websites and to protect Indian soldiers.They also claim to haveto bring down revenge porngroups on Facebook. It is not clear precisely what technical methods they use to gain access to these pages.
One such post on their group page addresses Malayalee women:
A University economics student, Ishika was targeted by the group after shesent a message to severalfriendsin an effort to collect data for a gender survey.
Ishika, who spoke with Global Voices about the incident, suspects that members of the group were somehow informed of her survey and that they considered it inappropriate, classifying it as a sex chat. This is visible in the transliteration of their response, otherwise in Malayalam, shown in the screenshot below. Ishika earlierhad posted a picture of sanitary napkins, which the group also found problematic.
A member of the group told Ishika to stop publishing feminist posts and threatened to slut shame her and expose her nude pictures online if she did not comply with the demands of the Kerala Cyber Warriors.
Members of the group told her that women like her were a blow to the Malayalam community and that her activities were destroying the reputations of other young women. They also demanded that she send themher login credentialsso that they could delete the posts themselves. She refused.
A member of the Facebook group then started to chat with Ishika, threatening to expose her if she did not comply with their requests within one day.
Ishika soon afterpublished aFacebook postaddressing the issue directly. She explained that she did not need theirprotection and she had no intention to remove any of her posts.
After Ishika published the above post, she encountered a freshwave of trolling attacks, phishing attempts andsexual harassment online, with multipleaccounts associated with the Kerala Cyber Warriors attackingher for speaking out against them.
Ishika tried to reason with them for two days and finally wrote a complaint to Facebook, using their abuse reporting process. The US-based company explicitly forbids bullying and harassment butdoes not punish harassers unless victimssubmit reports of harassment through theirofficial process.
Facebook’sCommunity Standards policy on the matter reads as follows:
We dont tolerate bullying or harassment. We allow you to speak freely on matters and people of public interest but remove content that appears to purposefully target private individuals with the intention of degrading or shaming them. This content includes, but is not limited to:
1. Pages that identify and shame private individuals,
2. Images altered to degrade private individuals,
3. Photos or videos of physical bullying posted to shame the victim,
4. Sharing personal information to blackmail or harass people, and
5. Repeatedly targeting other people with unwanted friend requests or messages.
Ishika has yet to hear back from Facebook on her complaint. Allies have also reported the Kerala Cyber Warriors group to Facebook, concerning their allegations of hacking other peoples accounts, which is also a violation of Facebook’s terms.
There has also been fallout from the incident on Facebook itself.Sona Nakshathra, who is a woman journalist mockedthe group on Facebook:
Gayathri Narayanan, who is a woman psychotherapist wrote sarcastically:
Despite Facebook’s proclaimed and actual efforts to curb gender-based harassment on their platform,threats of character assassination and extortion continue apace around the world, and in many countries where such threats can carry severe real-life consequences.
The author is fromKerala, India. Blogging in English and Malayalam since 2006. Lives short periods of time in India and long periods in U.S as part of work. Freelances for local dailies. Indulges in issues regarding womens rights, subaltern studies, travel, food.
This article was previously published in Global Voices.
Featured Image Courtesy: ramesh_lalwani via VisualHunt / CC BY-SA
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