<
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/09/26/hindu-nationalist-social-media-hate-campaign/>
"MUDBIDRI, India — At first, the WhatsApp messages touted roads paved, schools
built, free food distributed to the poor — all the usual pitches from a
government during election season. But as May drew closer, the messages turned
darker.
One viral post that landed in Sachin Patil’s iPhone listed the names of 24
local Hindu men it said were murdered by Muslims. Another mass message warned
of Hindu girls being groomed by Muslim men to join the Islamic State. Yet
another viral post that reached Patil made an urgent appeal to vote: “If the
BJP is here, your children will be safe. Hindus will be safe.”
By the time election day arrived here in south India’s Karnataka state, Patil,
a 25-year-old bank teller in a sleepy village outside Mangaluru, said he was
receiving 120 political messages a day in six WhatsApp groups. “They were
definitely a reminder,” Patil said, to cast a ballot for the Hindu nationalist
Bharatiya Janata Party that governs India.
The BJP, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and affiliated Hindu nationalist
groups have been in the global vanguard of using social media for political
aims — to advance their ideology and cement their grip over the world’s largest
electoral democracy. They have perfected the spread of inflammatory, often
false and bigoted material on an industrial scale, earning both envy and
condemnation beyond India’s borders.
Central to the success of the BJP, a party with 180 million members, is a
massive messaging machine built on top of U.S. social media platforms. It is
part of a wider effort by the right-wing forces aligned with Modi to wield
technology in various ways — and restrict its use by opponents — in pursuit of
a Hindu nationalist agenda that seeks to marginalize religious minorities and
suppress criticism.
As hate speech and disinformation in India have grown in recent years, Silicon
Valley giants have at times tried to police this incendiary content. But often
they have struggled — or willingly turned a blind eye."
Via
Garbage Day: The machines can see, hear, and speak now
https://www.garbageday.email/p/the-machines-can-see-hear-and-speak
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
