Facebook confessions and Secret app: Are we legitimising cyber abuse?

‘Please don’t Legally rape men, just because you are privileged to do so!!!’ From the three exclamation marks, to the ’l’ in caps in the middle of the sentence and the disturbing use of the rape analogy, this kind of message usually draws out the Facebook Dolly Bindra in me, which eventually leads to several wasted evenings and the brisk ‘unfriending’ of people.

However, in this case, I can only stare at the screen and gasp at the number of likes this FB post has received - 265 to be precise.

And no, this isn’t on some angry men’s rights page on FB, but an update on “IIT Confessions” - one that a few IIT-going friends of mine have ’liked’. The subjects range from childhood anecdotes and college crushes to Deepak Chopra-esque advice to rants like the one I have mentioned above. The one thing in common? You will never know who the author is.

Such ‘confessions’ pages are now a rage on Facebook, be it IIT Confessions, JU confessions, Blogger Confessions, or TCS Confessions, attracting a large audience of ranters, trolls, trouble-makers, closeted pep-talkers and general time-wasters.

And since what happens on Facebook never stays just on Facebook, the ‘confessions’ page has been made into a mobile phone app called ‘Secret’. Its logo is a cat and colour palette is pink, orange, blue and everything candy - did I hear Gossip Girly?

Now, obviously you don’t expect a discussion on Obama’s Middle East policy on a pink-coloured app called Secrets, but some of the content can be a bit alarming. Like the message, “Just what is good sex supposed to feel like?It’s been so long that I have forgotten,” which the app tells you has been posted by a ‘friend’. As in, someone the app recognises as your acquaintance by sourcing data from your phone contacts, mail id etc you use to sign in.

The guessing game about whose boyfriend chooses football over sex or whose girlfriend needs to up her game in bed might is certainly conducive to good weekend drinking – and good old fashioned titillation is what such confessional apps and pages are about. But they also offer the opportunity of abusing or maligning a person online with the comfort of anonymity. And guess what? You don’t even have to take pains to create a fake id.

For example, in my of friend’s Secret ‘circle’, this post surfaced: “Who do you want to make out with?”

There were a handful of usual celebrities, but some also put out names of specific people, sometimes with the said person’s Twitter handle. Now, do you enjoy the idea of anonymous people saying they want to sleep with you? It may not seem like outright harassment but since when is it okay to essentially proposition people – and that too in public?

Needless to say, sex - jokes, confessions, rants related to it - is the mainstay of all the ‘Secrets’ spilled out on the app. However, if someone can be ’liked’ on Secrets, it is clear that he/she can be hated and hence be victim of abuse, as well.

In an article on Caravan, the author observes that to make sure that it doesn’t lend itself to abuse and bullying Secrets allows you to only comment on a post made by a ‘friend’ or a ‘friend of friend’. So if a discussion on a post is getting violent or objectionable, it is evident that the people involved are people you either know, or your friends are acquainted with.

However, does that help you trace the said offenders? No. Given that our contacts lists and emails have hundreds of people in them who aren’t essentially ‘friends’ in the true sense of the term - does the assurance of having a remote link to a particularly offensive user of any help? If anything, it is actually worse because now you know that someone in your social network is intent on making you miserable from the safe comfort of anonymity.

Then there are the other kind of victims – the kind of not on Secrets. For example, I spotted a picture of an unsuspecting lady in a sari with the caption, ‘I like aunties!’. It’s all a bit funny until that turns out to be a photo of you, or your aunty.

You can flag a post on Secrets and report one on a Facebook Confessions page but we all know how well those kind of policies have work, be it on Facebook or Twitter.

The said bullies can not only get away with subjecting people to abuses, the anonymity provided by such a platform actually encourages cyber bullying. We had noted in an earlier article that writer Soraya Chemaly’s explanation on cyber abuse rings true for internet users across cultures. I n article on HuffingtonPost , Chemaly notes that abuse on the Internet thrives for the same reason street harassment does – because it is tolerated and it’s difficult to ascertain the identity of your tormentor.

Writer Sonia Faleiro in an article titled ‘ Women in India aren’t safe on Twitter either' , writes, “Recent events in India have shown that women who are perceived as modern, or successful—at both ends of the social spectrum—inspire anger in men who have failed to keep up.” Here, she is referring to the several incidents of online abuse that prominent women Twitter personalities have faced in the recent times. From rape and murder to threats of having their families slaughtered, women, in India and elsewhere too, is always at the receiving end of abusive behaviour. And apps like Secrets or Confession pages on Facebook only manage to extend a sense of legitimacy to it.