Ever since its failed acquisition earlier last year, Twitter, who had been accused of being plagued with an abuse and hate speech problem, has been trying to curb the problem. It has recently been quite active in moderating content and accounts based on their new tools and solutions debuted over the past few months. And its moral policing practices have now struck upon India’s once well-known Bollywood singer Abhijeet Bhattacharya.
The singer, who’s career came to an abrupt end, has been trying to remain in the limelight by his constant musing on Twitter. His tweets were mostly infuriating and nonsensical, which led many to condescend him and demand a ban on him using the micro-blogging platform.
When we thought his potty-mouthed tweets wouldn’t come to an end, Twitter jumped the gun and finally put an end to his freedom of speech. And that’s a genuine cause for celebration for some because it was getting out of hand.
The said suspension has been invited over an online controversy involving the man being tied down to the front of a jeep and being paraded around a district in Kashmir. It received comments by popularly known personalities such as author Arundhati Roy, actor Paresh Rawal, singer Sonu Nigam, and of course — Abhijeet Bhattacharya.
While the author is known to have controversial views about Kashmir, she condemned the action and received flak from many. The ranks of average individuals was joined by Paresh Rawal, when he said that Roy should be tied in front of that very jeep and parade her around Kashmir. While Rawal invited heat over his sexist tweet, Bhattacharya jumped in and reeked havoc with his hate speech and hatred towards people talking about this controversy.
Since his Twitter account is now unavailable and continues to remain suspended, we are quoting the text he tweeted earlier in the day. While he took a lot of abusive and misogynistic cracks at women on the social media website, including JNU student-activist Shehla Rashid. To her, Bhattacharya tweeted:
There is rumour she took money in advance for 2 hrs and didn’t satisfy the client.. big racket
While this is just one of the examples, he was completely out of line when he (probably) tweeted a Pakistani woman saying:
You Ms Pak. Tell me your cage no? Will reach there… Will do the favourite pose.
In an interview, he has said that Arundhati Roy and people supporting JNU have reported his account and they are behind its very suspension. Bhattacharya is also of the opinion that the same individuals are now trying to get Twitter to block actor Paresh Rawal as well due to their anti-India stance on this situation. Sonu Nigam has also joined this massive controversy, supporting Abhijeet’s stance by deleting his account after tweeting out a series of 24 tweets.
Over the past few months, Twitter has been extensively cracking down on abusive content, which was proved earlier this year when it suspended American businessman Martin Shkreli’s Twitter account. He was seen spewing targeted harassment against freelance reporter Lauren Duca on the platform. It also permanently banned Breitbart tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos after similar allegations against Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones.
