If Tik Tok was a menace filled with grotesque and at times lewd content that millions of Indians were served up in atrocious quantities, the banning of the app has allowed Facebook-owned Instagram to take its place by practically usurping the UI of the Chinese platform and similarly serving objectionable and obscene content.
Tik Tok was a Chinese platform built and introduced in India with the sole purpose to harvest the data of its users to send it back to the Politburo sitting in Beijing. Thus, the content disseminated on the platform was barely funnelled by the moderators and more often than not, porn, skimpily clad people dancing to lo-fi psychedelic music were seen indulging in explicit behaviour on the platform which inadvertently harmed the society as a whole.
While Tik Tok was dealt a swift and decisive blow by the central government – talking about the negative effects of the ByteDance owned app neatly brings us along to Instagram, where in the guise of mind-numbing daily challenges such as the more recent #SilhouetteChallenge, teenagers, as well as adults, hungry for instant validation and a boost of serotonin are engaging in creating content which at best could be described as ‘filthy’.
By raking up the likes, views and followers count through such videos, these individuals crown themselves with the self-proclaimed tag of ‘Influencers’ and tend to preach a lot of hogwash to their otherwise unaware audience. Everyone is allowed to be themselves on social media platforms, but no freedom is absolute and relying on producing consciously cheap content is where the line needs to be drawn.
Another incident that points to the ‘cesspool’ of immoral activities Instagram has metamorphosed itself into could be last year’s ‘Bois Locker room’ incident where several teenage Delhi boys were seen indulging in lecherous chats and sharing morphed pictures of underage girls.
While it is not to say that Instagram has become a place for obtuse individuals only — there are thousands of content creators who have used the reels function of the same platform to increase their reach by making cohesive, informative and entertaining short videos.
But just the way we had seen with Tik Tok, the ‘clout chaser’ striplings of the platform are multiplying with an alarming pace and if Instagram does not indulge in the clean-up act any sooner, the Mark Zuckerberg owned platform could trudge down the same path as Tik Tok.
As reported last month by TFI, it is not just Instagram that has been plagued by cheap content. YouTube is another big platform where sexual assault and harassment has been normalised to an extent where the creators can get away by calling it a harmless ‘prank’.
NCW Chief Rekha Sharma had taken cognisance of such ‘sexual abuse pranks’ when videos of the same went viral on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/yaifoundations/status/1369581019632787463?
Recently, the Modi government unveiled a set of guidelines for OTT and social media platforms to adhere to, after calls to regulate the digital space were received. With the announcement of the OTT and social media guidelines, the Modi government has set in place a three-tier self-regulatory mechanism for online content publishers, and also specifically designed new classification ratings for OTT platforms for categorisation of content.
Such guidelines will apply to all digital content creators, and hopefully to the ones generating crass content on Instagram, for we all deserve a platform that is free of such absurdities.