K Lakshmana used to be a 26 yr old, cheerful employee working with HCL in Bangalore. On August 31 in the early hours of the day he was blissfully sleeping when he was rudely awaken with a jolt. He was facing a dozen cops who ordered him to be get immediately dressed since it was going to be a long ride. He was told he was being arrested for defaming Shivaji? A terrified Lakshmana pleaded that he did not know any Shivaji? Of course you do, the cops retorted; we are referring to Chhatrapathi Shivaji Maharaj

Suraj, is a moderator of a small community on the popular personal networking site, Orkut. In the night of August 4, cops barge into his apartment. A dazed Suraj asked what it was all about? “You are party to addressing hate mail to Bala Saheb Thackery”, the angry cop responds. But that is impossible; I never wrote anything begs a tearful Suraj. “You did not write anything, but you didn”t delete the hate message written by a member of your community named Farique from Lucknow who is still absconding. As the moderator of the community, you are being arrested under the law of the land”

Rahul Vaid was an IT professional in Gurgaon. Another day he is an undertrial. The cops have arrested him on the orders of a local Congress politician from Maharashtra who noticed vulgar language used against Sonia Gandhi by the accused in “We hate Sonia Gandhi” community on orkut. Rahul faces a prison term upto 5 years for his crime, which is at par with circulating child pornography or helping a terrorist both materially and ideologically to hatch a conspiracy in your home with full knowledge of the consequences.

If you happen to hate any Politician or You are against one Religious leader or You hate any actor or actress, You now have space to vent your emotions. Hate communities or hate clubs are becoming increasingly popular on social networking Web sites like Google-owned Orkut in India.

On Orkut , membership of the leading hate communities like Ekta Kapoor (76,468), Himesh Reshamiya (33,137), Shah Rukh Khan (11,179), Greg Chappell (7,659), Musharraf (1,362) Amitabh Bachchan (1,410) is in thousands.

Ironically, while the Father of the Nation boasts a thousands-strong hate club, his killer, Nathuram Godse, does not even warrant a mention on Orkut or Facebook.

What makes such communities and groups popular in net users? Psychiatrist Sameer Parekh feels that such communities become popular because they appeal to our hatred for certain things.

“People have certain amount of hatred, dislikes and complexities and they get a chance to express it on such communities. But, there are very few people who give importance to such things. They reinforce your point of view and you join them without giving much thought.”

While most communities may be an ideal way to express the common dislikes about the regular things in life with a humorous tone, but recently objections have been raised over some communities for hurting sentiments. Social networking sites are also trying to come up with new methods to prevent the abuse of such communities.

“We take the abuse of Orkut seriously and are constantly developing new tools to review inappropriate content on the site. Orkut users can report content to our reviewers by clicking the ‘report as bogus’ button. There are also tools for community owners to delete posts or topics, ban users and delete anonymous posts,” says Google Spokesperson.

“But At the same time, we put a certain amount of trust in our users to notify us of violations. We have also introduced a priority reporting tool. It makes it easier for the police to contact us when they get concerns about content on Orkut ,” adds the spokesperson.

Though, the regular measures are being taken to check the misuse, regulating such communities is still a problem.

There are similar communities on Orkut against other political parties and political leaders, including “We Hate Congress”, “I Hate Indira Gandhi,” “I Hate Rajshekhar Reddy”, “We hate Pratibha Patil” and “I Hate Deve Gowda” (Business Standard, Rediff, TOI, Mid Day, Salon).

In October 2006, the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court directed the Maharashtra government to issue a notice to Google for hosting a community called ‘We Hate India’ on Orkut, forcing Google to delete the community (TOI, Business Standard, Economics Times).

In March 2007, Google deleted a community that had defamatory content against West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, after Kolkata police asked Mumbai police to help it ban it (Economic Times, The Telegraph).

By the way, the Indian government has also considered banning user generated videos on mobile (MMS) and the web (Economic Times) and the Mumbai police has installed keystroke logging software in cyber cafes to tackle piracy and cyber crime.

a Full-Time Blogger & Entrepreneur from Calicut, Now working as the CEO of eNewsz.com

Jasir Javaz

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