It is often said social media is a double-edged weapon. While there is no doubt that social media helps dissemination of information in a faster way, more often than not, it is being abused by the people.
Especially, social media being used by the political parties is being grossly abused by the people. In Andhra Pradesh, such social media platforms operated by the political parties have turned from bad to worse these days.
Whether it is of YSR Congress party or the Telugu Desam Party or for that matter, Jana Sena Party, the social media have become platforms for people not only to sling mud at one another, but also stoop to the level of making personal abuses.
These political parties have their own social media wings and have hired a few hundred operators to run them by paying them monthly salaries.
The primary duty of these social media workers is to post messages of their respective party leaders who make statements on various forums, apart from highlighting the programmes and policies of their respective parties.
But instead of doing this duty, these political social media workers are engaged in making filthy comments against their political rivals, morphing images of rival leaders and spread bad words about them.
One can understand to some extent, if these social media workers indulge in trolling of the rival political parties and leaders. But what they are doing these days is to drag even women of the rival party heads and post filthy comments and indulge in their character assassination.
There have been instances of the i-TDP activists making abusive personal comments against YSRCP leaders like R K Roja and even Y S Bharati, wife of chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy. Similar postings are done by the social media activists of Jana Sena Party headed by power star Pawan Kalyan.
Not to lag behind, the YSRCP social media activists drag the names of TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu’s wife Bhuvaneshwari and daughter-in-law Nara Brahmani and target them with vulgar comments.
These days, these paid political social media workers have gone a step ahead. They create fake e-papers of popular Telugu dailies with abusive and vulgar stories about the women leaders and wives of rival party presidents. They make these e-paper clippings viral on social media, so as to make people believe that they were really published by these popular dailies.
It is time the Central government come out with a policy on such abusive social media posts and fake news. Otherwise, they will reach dangerous proportions!
