Manish Tripathi, an Advocate in the Lucknow Bench of Allahabad High Court, says the content creators who put their own and others’ lives at risk must not go unpunished. His views:
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc are full of stupid and dangerous short videos, popularly called as reels, these days. If you watch such content, you will soon realise that these video clips are not only a reflection of our social degeneration but also a safety hazard for the creator and the public at large.
Recently, I watched one such reel where two motorcycle-borne youths at a crowded section tossed away currency notes in the air. In another one, I saw a young girl driving her car in reverse gear at such a speed that she ultimately fell off a cliff and lost her life. While the first one was a safety hazard or a crime, the latter was a downright suicidal act. Why are these young people putting their and others lives at risk? What for? Cheap publicity? Or just for more followers and ‘likes’? Or are they monetizing these visuals?
Though some of the foolish acts performed in the reels can be and have been checked by various arms of the laws, a majority of such performances goes unchecked. In legal terms, if some persons are obstructing movement on roads – by performing stunts on a vehicle or driving in a dangerous way – they can be booked under sections of the Motor Vehicle Act. There are also various punitive section in the new BNS (Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita) for disturbing social and public harmony, inciting enmity, causing threat to public life, spreading rumors, etc., under which such people can be brought to book. However, by and large our law enforcing agencies are reluctant to act against such acts, either due to their immense work load or just because of sheer negligence.
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What I strongly suggest is that the government, besides passing strict prohibitory laws to control social media and internet usage, should also focus on bringing these activities under control – with the existing provisions in the laws and some additional strict steps like sending the culprits to detention centers/rehabs. For, most of these content creators are so obsessed by their acts that it has taken the proportion of an addiction, where they have a compulsive urge to better their previous content without thinking about the risk involved.
The government agencies and parents groups must sit together to create a mechanism wherein such life-threatening acts can be discouraged or punished. Besides, these preventive and punitive actions, there should be a well-orchestrated media campaign (involving print, electronic and social media) to create awareness against performing such acts. Also the arrests and punishments for such content creators should be publicized to deter others from following such a course.
There should also be proper large notice-boards around spots where most such acts are filmed (such as bridges, high-rises, cliffs, religious places) to caution people against performing such activities, along with the fine and punishments for the law-breakers. Though some governments (states and central) are doing exemplary work to check this menace, they should go a step further and also take initiative to block such users from the social media platforms.
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As told to Rajat Rai