Despite Twitter’s own policies, explicitly violent sexual content is readily available online, leading to the rise of a massive psy-war.
CW: rape and self-harm.
The prominence of hashtags on Twitter allows for a vast amount of sexual or NSFW content to flourish. However, there are a lack of policies and guidelines to prevent this, which pretty much makes Twitter the PornHub of social media.
‘DisinfoLab’ has reported that communal harmony is being targeted on Twitter in this psychological warfare.
Twitter is known for harbouring a mass amount of content from the adult industry – from live webcam sessions to ‘off-line services’ – that are all accessible using hashtags.
Many NSFW websites show their registration to supply pornography. However, in countries like India, the distribution, manufacturing and publishing of porn is illegal.
The #IndianCamGirl hashtag commonly pops up and links to multiple service providers, the report said.
The #IndianCamGirl hashtag began in 2017, involving numerous influencers. It is regularly used as an ode to highlight Twitter’s lack of effort to as addressing such concerns.
Twitter India:
Between dates July 26-August 25 2021.
They suspended a total of 26,726 accounts related to child sexual exploitation, non-consensual nudity, and similar content.
— Eliza (@elizableu) September 14, 2021
However, the ‘services’ engage in data mining from their users with the intention of being used for criminal activities like ‘sextortion’, r*pe and sexual exploitation of minors, which results in morbid consequences like suicide.
The ‘free porn’ environment and Twitter’s relaxed attitude is being used to weaponise explicit content.
In their report, DisinfoLab stated that a complex psy-war is taking place to damage India’s communal harmony, specifically between Hindus and Muslims. The report noted,
“Hundreds of fake handles are running coordinated campaigns, dehumanising the women of both religions. These handles pretend to be Hindus (#hstuds) when demeaning Muslim girls (#mslut); and Muslim (#mstud), while demeaning Hindu girls (#hslut).”
The behavioural patterns of these handles, including the account’s creation date, activity, location and hashtag usage, indicate an organised campaign to harm social harmony.
Other social media platforms like Facebook seem to apply policies of ‘Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour’ (CIB), yet Twitter doesn’t appear to take any actions in this department, according to the report.
Twitter is a U.S based for-profit company that follows US laws, therefore disregarding other country’s laws, like India’s, which prohibits adult content on social media.
Delhi Police have issued notice to Twitter India & have sought details about videos of sexual exploitation of children. Cyber Cell of the @DelhiPolice have already registered an FIR against Twitter on the complaints of @NCPCR_ .
— Pramod Kumar Singh (@SinghPramod2784) June 30, 2021
The report noted that Twitter has failed to integrate simple ‘location’ and ‘age’ filters, making it very easy for children to access such content if they wanted to.
Twitter has been accused of being blind to obscene content being spread on its platform, like child pornography despite having policies on child sexual exploitation.
“To access Twitter Hub, one need not even own a Twitter account. An open Google search could land anyone, even a minor, to most gory and vulgar contents available on Twitter with just a click on ‘view sensitive content’. Seems #Google also needs to take measures to control it,” the report noted.
We can speculate that Twitter may have intentionally adopted this attitude to facilitate a gap in the market, as platforms like Instagram have long targeted members of the adult industry, by censoring and banning their content.
