Singer for removing abusive online accounts

The petition was started by Chinmayi Sripada, a Chennai-based popular playback singer, after she received comments like “You need to be raped …”, “I’ll throw acid on your face” and “I’ll make sure you never sing again” for expressing her opinion on Twitter. 

“When I tried to report these threats, Twitter simply ignored my fears. They told me that they would not take any action unless there was a police case,” she said in her petition. While most women give up when they are faced with such comments, Chinmayi decided to fight it out and filed a police complaint. “Ultimately it was my fans who helped us identify my abusers. Three people were arrested and spent 10 days in jail,” she said. 

Stating that cases of abuse and threats by people on social media is drastically increasing, activist Priya Menon said, “Social media platforms have become the best platform for some to abuse women. They think women voicing out their opinions is simply unacceptable and that rape threats will shut all women up.” Faced with such threats, most women tend to leave social media platforms. “Two of my friends had quit Twitter recently after they had similar encounters. 

The threats are not just in response to their tweets, but also sent as direct messages,” said Shilpa Thomas, a college student, residing in Nungambakkam. 

While Twitter recently came out with new safety policies for its users, with options of ‘mute’ and ‘block’ functions, it has never done a largescale shutdown of accounts that promote violence against women. 

“If Twitter does a large scale shut down of the accounts that threaten to rape women, it will send a very strong message that the platform cannot be used for such vicious attacks. Women across the world are beginning to find Twitter hostile and traumatic. It’s time Twitter cleaned up its act and showed women that it is truly listening to our concerns,” Chinmayi said in her petition, which has gained a lot of support from the city crowd.  

Twitter India failed to respond to a tweet sent by  DT Next regarding the issue.