Former Jawaharlal Nehru University student leader Shehla Rashid has deactivated her Twitter account
The hate that I get from pro-BJP accounts is organised, writes the activist, who has deactivated her Twitter account.In my head, I wake up every day, read something meaningful and go for a run. In reality, however, I sleep next to my phone and check it first thing in the morning. My phone is always on 'silent' mode—all day and night. It is impossible for me to cater to every notification that pops up on my smartphone. So, each morning, I try to look for any urgent message or email and then proceed to check Twitter, because so much keeps happening there.Ms Rashid, who had close to 500 thousand followers, said her going off on Twitter should be an "SOS call" to it.
"The abuse on Twitter started in 2010. The platform is such that it enables an ecosystem where abusers can gang up against you using many hashtags and it has been effectively used by the right-wing voices. It is not freedom of expression but an attack on freedom of expression," she said.
Ms Rashid said it was not a good thing to wake up to abusive tweets in the morning and almost a 1,000 such tweets everyday had started taking a toll on her "psychogically".
"The platform has become extremely polarised. If I extended condolences to the Opposition over something or even congratulated the Opposition over something, I used to get hate messages," she said.