Social Media: With Power Comes Responsibility. Think Twice Before A Re-Tweet/Share

In today’s age of social media, it doesn’t take much effort to get something trend, especially when the message being conveyed is a provocative one.

On APJ Abdul Kalam’s death, a tweet by BJP MLA Raja Singh @RajaSingBJP was gaining a lot of attention. It was an attempt to incite communal violence and cause communal disharmony. Unless you take the effort to verify the tweet by logging into your twitter and searching for this tweet, you won’t realize that this is a fake twitter account impersonating the official twitter handle of the BJP MLA Raja Singh @RajaSinghBJP.

You may or may not have come across this but the screenshot of the tweet was widely shared across various social media platforms including whatsapp. Those who have came across this tweet must have built a very wrong perception about the BJP MLA. Later on, Raja himself clarified via his official twitter handle about the fake profile. The fake profile has been now deleted after Raja reported it to Twitter for impersonation.

The Logical Indian wants you to understand that there is a difference in running a parody account for fun/entertainment and impersonating someone for spreading hate speech and rumors. Such incidents have surfaced in the past too, the tweets were spread all over Internet to malign a particular person purposefully. Impersonating an account of an MLA or MP or a public representative should be made a criminal offence under cyber laws. We also request everyone to not to make such fake handles and mislead others or spread rumors. Let’s be productive.

We also request our community members to please take a minute and verify whenever you come across such instances. Please don’t share the links/tweets/screenshots unless you verify and find it true.

In this age of social media, the power lies with us and so does the responsibility. Think twice before you endorse something on the internet.