Deafening Silence: What 'Bulli Bai' And 'Sulli Deals' Tell Us About Big Tech Giants
On January 4, 2022, Mumbai Police arrested a 21-year-old engineering student named Vishal Kumar for setting up "Bulli Bai", an app that wanted to auction Muslim women. On the same day, 18-year-old Shweta Singh was arrested from Uttarakhand for her involvement in the creation of "Bulli Bai."
A deplorable sequel to "Sulli Deals", the GitHub-based app displayed women belonging to the Muslim community in a derogatory fashion, drawing much flak online.
The app called "Bulli Bai" is now offline and the police claim to be working on the case. Even then, we've heard no acknowledgment from GitHub's parent company Microsoft. Even Twitter, where the predatory nature of the app was brought to public attention has remained a quiet observer.
While local police forces were shaken to work by tweets from prominent women who were featured on the list, tech companies have turned a blind eye to the entire fiasco... yet again!
What Bulli Bai and Sulli Deals tell us about tech companies
When the original "auction" Sulli Deals came into being, the social media news cycle absorbed it as it would - its discovery was followed by collective outrage, after which the entire thing fizzled out and even until now, no arrests have been made. To be blunt, this isn't an extraordinary one-off development.?
When social media platforms backed by big tech allow hate to fester on their platforms, a sum of this hate is inevitably more hate, with the potential of causing harm to people in the physical realm.
Also read:?Bulli Bai App: Indian Authorities Ask Twitter And Github About App's Origin
The question worth asking right now is whether tech biggies like Microsoft are doing enough to not only take reactive measures, but also to proactively discourage users from using their tool to dehumanise a minority community -- whether it's in India or anywhere else in the world where they do business.
Besides privacy infringement, the app was endorsing human trafficking of Muslim women, painting them as caricatures to be sold off and bought as its male patrons deemed fit.?
Prominent figures like actress Shabana Azmi and Malala Yousafzai were among the 100 Muslim women featured on the app. Even Fatima Nafees, the mother of Najeeb Ahmed, a JNU student who disappeared was not spared.
What big tech must do
For context, "bulli" and "sulli" are sexist slurs used to dehumanise Muslim women in India. The fact that these words were even acceptable to Microsoft is atrocious. It shines light on a problem currently plaguing India, wherein American tech giants import solutions from their home societies to the highly diverse social set-up of India. What we need is a series of ever-evolving localised strategies to fight such hate.?
So far, all tech companies involved in the unfortunate incident have remained tight-lipped. Just last year, the government tightened its control over tech companies with its new IT laws that require localised solutions to local problems on social media. Sure, it brought more transparency for the government but ordinary citizens seem to have not benefited at all.
Also read:?Bulli Bai Case: 21-year-old Engineering Student Detained In Bengaluru By Mumbai Police
Why is it so hard for tech companies to reflect and react? As Sophie Zhang, a Facebook whistleblower told us - these are all corporate companies that eventually want to make money. Naturally, the safety of their users is going to take a back seat. If you think that's an over-generalisation of a 'sporadic' problem plaguing big tech, then it isn't wholly accurate.
In conversation with Al Jazeera, Fatima Zohra Khan, a lawyer from Mumbai said that "we got no response from Twitter, GitHub and Go-Daddy" while adding that Mumbai Police is requesting the tech companies to reveal data. "These websites refuse to share information unless a court warrant is produced."
Reacting to such abhorrent incidents shouldn't be the norm for big tech companies. They should be more proactive in ensuring their platforms and services aren't weaponised against sections of our broader society. It's high time tech companies took into account the role their complacency plays in promoting such hateful behaviour, especially if they choose to remain silent spectators.
If anything else, 2021 helped us understand how tech biggies like Facebook and Twitter can shake the basic foundations of any democracy. Should they not then also take responsibility for all unchecked hate exploding on their respective portals? When Microsoft (Github's parent company) wants ¡°to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more,¡± we'd like to hope it's not at the expense of anyone.?
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