Washington
US-based non-profit Stand With Kashmir’s new report highlights the complicity of social media platforms in digitally censoring Kashmiris inside Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir and abroad since 2017.
Social media giants are complicit in the “erasure of Kashmiri digital rights and the ongoing digital blackout of Kashmir,” according to a new report by rights group Stand With Kashmir (SWK).
Since 2017, tech companies like Facebook and Twitter have been accused of continually silencing Kashmiris online by removing content and suspend-ing accounts.
According to the SWK report, the Big Tech has engaged in “algorithmic manipulation of content critical of India’s military occupation and settler colonialism in the region”.
While the advent of social media has trans-formed the realm of political activism in Indian-administered Kashmir, freedom of speech and ex-pression of Kashmiris both inside Kashmir and out-side Kashmir have been routinely suppressed, the report added.
“Facebook and Twitter have continually sided with the Indian authorities’ weaponization of law and policy to curb Kashmir-related reportage and activism in the digital space,” SWK wrote.
The non-profit says that it used a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to carry out its study, including polls, a detailed survey, and inter-views of prominent Kashmiri social media influen-cers.
An online poll of SWK’s 32,000 followers on Twitter and Instagram was conducted, where users were asked which platforms they experienced cen-sorship on.
Of the 311 responses, 62 percent said they ex-perienced censorship of some kind on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
In another Instagram poll where 140 responses were logged, 19 percent said they experienced censorship on Twitter, 25 percent did on Facebook, and 44 percent on Instagram.
Based on those methods, SWK was able to draw out an in-depth understanding of the impacts of censorship; the potential relationship of the Indian state to the instance of censorship; and recommen-dations for platforms to re-establish trust with Kashmiris.
Kashmiri users have been censored in various ways, from having their accounts disabled, sus-pended, and permanently deleted.—KMS
