10 ms·

The WhatsApp suicide

98 points by akbarnama 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dunkelsten 10y ago
So this is what happens, if exponential progress collides head-on with a medieval culture thad had no time to prepare. Absolutely scary - and to me it rather looks like it's helping fighting equality and human decency rather than fostering it.
- mistersquid 10y ago
  > So this is what happens, if exponential progress collides head-on with a medieval culture thad had no time to prepare It's inaccurate to characterize this as a problem with "medieval culture" meeting new technology. This is a problem of a misogynist ultra-patriarchal culture (subculture?) in which new technology enables abusers to spread evidence of their misdeeds as a kind of perverse propaganda. This is NOT to say India as a whole, or even in the main, is misogynist and ultra-patriarchal. Another reason I'm calling this out as inaccurate is that it distances many first-worlders (for example, myself in the USA) from such behavior, but we know all too well that such behaviors are replicated at all levels of society from the lowest and most impoverished ghettos to the most advantaged, wealthy, and presumably cultured dynastic families. Technology in the form of social media enables others to see it and, in this particular instance, the distribution of the video documenting the crime has the effect (intended or not) of further repressing women who would dare to better themselves and their society (e.g. as health workers). What really saddens me (as well as reinforces the idea that the dissemination of the video reinforces misogyny) is the husband's reaction: > But in her home village, anger over Geeta's death is still > muted by questions about her honour. Even Geeta's own > husband, who eventually found out about the video from his > neighbours, shares the prevailing suspicion that she might > have done something to encourage the attack. "If she had > told me," he says, "we'd have asked her if it was done with > her consent. Then we'd have gathered the village elders to > decide what action should be taken." He shows no sign of > outrage about the rape, and has made no demands for police > action. EDIT: Formatting, punctuation, grammar, readability.
  - ethanbond 10y ago
    Totally. We shouldn't be totally isolating ourselves and our own culture from this abominable behavior. Like every few months there's a similar story involving some top 10 football team getting away with the same shit.
0xmohit 10y ago
The court also asked the IT Ministry to examine what measures could be taken to block the online circulation of such videos. Wonder what can be done to block such incidents when ministers in Indian Parliament watch porn. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-09/indian-mps-busted-for-watching-porn/3819490 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-09/indian-mps-busted-for-... http://www.deccanherald.com/content/225344/karnataka-minister-caught-watching-porn.html http://www.deccanherald.com/content/225344/karnataka-ministe...
- AlexeyBrin 10y ago
  > Wonder what can be done to block such incidents when ministers in Indian Parliament watch porn. This has nothing to do with watching porn. Plenty of men watch porn and don't rape anyone. It has everything to do with a culture that blames the victim of a rape for the actual rape.
  - drspacemonkey 10y ago
    While I don't disagree with you at all, the fact that "ministers in Indian Parliament watch porn" is meant literally makes me wonder what kind of overlap there is. These are elected officials watching porn on their phones during parliamentary sessions. I'm not saying that one causes the other, just that they both might be symptomatic of a related root cause.
    - dennisgorelik 10y ago
      Yes: that root cause is that men want sex. Now that you know that common cause - what's your next logical step?
  - 0xmohit 10y ago
    The culture gets worse because those committing crimes get away so easily. More than 80% of rape incidents go unreported, and a small fraction of the accused in the remaining ones are convicted. And a fair number of ministers have been accused of rape.
  - 10y ago
ensiferum 10y ago
Here's a tip for the indian women living in such fuck towns. Get a sturdy piece of food and whack some long rusty nails through it. Learn how to swing it. Carry it when you if you need to walk during dark/after hours.
- AlexeyBrin 10y ago
  > Here's a tip for the indian women living in such fuck towns. Get a sturdy piece of food and whack some long rusty nails through it. Learn how to swing it. Carry it when you if you need to walk during dark/after hours. Pretty sure this will get you raped and killed. Do you really think you can defend yourself from 3 men with some rusty nails ? The problem here is a cultural problem and you can (try to) solve it by changing the culture through education and law enforcement.
  - joecool1029 10y ago
    I agree, though guns work better along this mindset because: 1. loud (even if you miss, people know something's up). 2. they don't require much physical strength. TBH, a loud device will probably do more good for deterrents than attempting to beat attackers with quiet sticks and nails. Active deterrents help, but limiting the places it can happen will do better than law enforcement ever will. Consider installing more toilets instead of shitting in open fields. Not only does it increase safety but there's a multitude of health benefits. http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/06/09/319529037/indias-rape-uproar-ignites-demand-to-end-open-defecation http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/06/09/319529037/i... http://www.india.com/lifestyle/indias-lack-of-toilets-is-contributing-to-the-countrys-rape-crisis-172523/ http://www.india.com/lifestyle/indias-lack-of-toilets-is-con...
    - badestrand 10y ago
      So you really think that half a billion guns in hands will make India safer? Apart from that, the family could not even afford a simple door, no way they can buy a gun then.
  - ensiferum 10y ago
arpit 10y ago
Has an Indian male, reading about this stuff is both extremely horrifying and sadly familiar. What are the organizations and charities who are doing the best work to change this situation? I'd like to actively help.
rosalinekarr 10y ago
This is terrible, but blaming WhatsApp seems like a weird leap of logic. If someone harassed you over the phone, you wouldn't blame the telecom company. If someone sent you a death threat in the mail, you wouldn't sue the postal service. If someone hit you with their car, you wouldn't retaliate against the automaker. It seems like the BBC is just bringing up the name of the popular chat app as a way of generating more clicks. If their goal is raise awareness for the woman who died and people like her, that's noble but a bit misguided. If their goal is simply to generate more viewership and revenue for their website (which it seems like it is), it's deplorable.
- vehementi 10y ago
  What part of the article did you find was blaming WhatsApp here?
  - afarrell 10y ago
    The title
- kyle-w 10y ago
  Are you kidding me? WhatsApp want to be in the hands of the uneducated and illiterate and Zuckerberg takes every chance he gets to say this is going to make the world a better place. If that's the claim they make, they better feel responsible when there are unintended consequences like rural men using the platform as a distribution system for illegal porn. If every time there are unintended consequences in software and bugs don't get filled, guess what the system does not fix itself. This has to be treated the same way.
  - stinkytaco 10y ago
    >If every time there are unintended consequences in software and bugs don't get filled, guess what the system does not fix itself. This has to be treated the same way. I don't think this analogy really holds. It's not a "bug", the system works as intended. The big difference between a system like Facebook or WhatsApp and a telco is not that it's the responsibility of the platform -- WhatsApp is not encouraging abuse -- but the fact that abuse can be monitored for. This raises the interesting question of moral culpability. If the crime can be prevented with certain tools (in this case monitoring tools), is it the responsibility of the platform to do so? It seems that we are shifting more and more to the "yes" end of that spectrum.
cm3 10y ago
Some societies are worse than others, but if even in the self-proclaimed modern civilization of the western world professionals in the adult entertainment or sex/erotic services industry are treated like 2nd class citizens, there's a need for a more substantial shift in perception and treatment of something that's as natural as eating and sleeping. It's unnatural that many societies have created ways to suppress human nature in many ways they deem morally incorrect, and it's very wrong that laws reflect the moral world views of some. I won't go into how there used to be societies which in some regards were more open and safer than today's, or how the treatment by a part of some religious communities goes against those religions' core beliefs. Empowering people to defend themselves and deal with abuse in a dignified way is very important, and we first need to stop blaming victims as "promiscuous" or "having asked for it". This isn't very different from how we treat people who went to prison. EDIT: We also need to find a good way to investigate accusations without automatically assuming that, for instance, alleged male perpetrators are by default considered (not found, to be clear) guilty, or that wives do not abuse their husbands. The described societal defects are partly to blame, as are underequipped/unskilled law enforcement or judicial departments. If someone can lose their job and family because anybody merely publicly accuses them of a sex crime or adultery, then it's clear we have a problem on the other end of the spectrum. To me, both are caused by related societal flaws and will take a long time to correct. Another way this surfaces is that people tend to worry more about a government official's personal life than their positive/negative acts in office.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Up is down. Black is white. Pants are shirts. A story about a woman who was shamed into suicide by a culture --- one of the world's largest --- that blames women for their own violent rapes is evidence that society needs to correct its bias against men.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - cm3 10y ago
    And it may not have helped that the place in question has tribalism in place which classifies persons by their heritage in ways that are unimaginable to most of the HN crowd.
vehementi 10y ago
This makes my blood boil. This is the kind of thing that makes me surprised there aren't more vigilantes. Not from that dumpster fire village of course, but from some nearby place whose reputation is tarnished by association. I wouldn't condone that but given how furious I am right now I can't imagine being physically and emotionally close to the situation in the first place and there not being someone (perhaps more unstable) that wouldn't just go and take vengeance. > if by any chance they do lay their hands on a phone or use ear phones to listen to music, then they are branded 'characterless'" @#$%!
kyle-w 10y ago
This makes me so angry and upset. Facebook shouldn't just be holding developer conferences every year. This is way outside the scope of what Tech Companies skill sets can handle. There has to be open public acknowledgement of that at the highest levels and not just the usual PR. Unintended consequences of tech have to be treated in the same way we treat high priority bugs.
overcast 10y ago
Spent the month of March in India this year. It's so sad how the poor, women, and the overall environment are treated there. I think India has a lot to offer the world, but they've got a long way to go cleaning up many aspects of life there.
raisedadead 10y ago
I apologize for the incident, disgusted as I am with this, I just can't seemingly imagine what the women in the article went through. These things shove my proud Indian head into my own @#$%@! Yet would like to lay a different perspective: I am an Indian, an average tech professional, doing well in a good job, in a good city. Yes, the majority of my country is conservative. Yes, we have views that are biased against women. Do we have laws to protect them? Yes, we do. Do we have agencies to enforce them? Yes, we do. Do we have resources to support such agencies? Yes, we do. Yet we see these incidents happening in tens of villages, towns, cities happening every day. Sadly "MOST of them unreported", let alone, being investigated, and the perpetrators getting tried and punished. Trust me on this one, most walk away free, and that encourages them to do it yet again. The BIG question is then why is a basic safety not in place? You would say, isn't it the job of the law agencies to deal with this. Ugh, yeah... But blooper, a very good chunk of them are "corrupt". We are not backward in tech arena anymore, though we have WhatsApp in villages where we still have 2 hours of electricity per day. The technology is already in place, govt. orgs are all on Twitter, WhatsApp, etc. Do respond to requests and complaints (yeah you can tweet to our railway minister Mr.. Suresh Prabhu and he responds with immediate action, ex: https://twitter.com/baloomahapatra/status/792361492796637184 https://twitter.com/baloomahapatra/status/792361492796637184) It's just that the majority of masses are not "technically" educated enough to put it in use. They have access to weapons already (WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook), but just choose to use them against the good use they should be put to. You don't need guns when you have a pen (now internet). To me there are two possible ways to bring in some change to my sick country: 1) We tell the people of my country to take matters in their hand: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/16/india.gender https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/16/india.gender Yes, bring in the knives/guns, castrate the f@#$%ing bastards. 2) Educate, everyone when giving them access to the technology, the apps, the whole internet what they should be doing with it. The later is a more important step too. Google started an initiative to provide free high-speed internet access at major railway stations, and here is what Patna (capital of Bihar state) did with their free wifi card: http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2016/10/17/patna-is-the-no-1-user-of-googles-free-wi-fi-at-railway-stati/ http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2016/10/17/patna-is-the-no-1-us... Yes, Porn. ~~~ The whole point that I want to lay on the table, is we DESPERATELY need to bridge the gap between the cultural conservative "backwardness" and the rapid pace at which we are being given these tech gizmos to play with. I beg with my folded hands to the govt. To please use my tax money (increase it if need be), to educate the agencies, the village elders, the women who go out to those "doomed" towns of mine, and most IMPORTANTLY the god damned f%$#$# bastard perpetrators that the tech is there to make this country a much better place than it is. I am doing what I am able to, but if you are reading this please wish my country gets well soon. I am a proud Indian, in just 70 years we are beating the world to Mars, yet we have burning infernos in the towns, villages, and there are no fire trucks nearby.

98 points by akbarnama 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

So this is what happens, if exponential progress collides head-on with a medieval culture thad had no time to prepare. Absolutely scary - and to me it rather looks like it's helping fighting equality and human decency rather than fostering it.

mistersquid 10y ago
> So this is what happens, if exponential progress collides head-on with a medieval culture thad had no time to prepare It's inaccurate to characterize this as a problem with "medieval culture" meeting new technology. This is a problem of a misogynist ultra-patriarchal culture (subculture?) in which new technology enables abusers to spread evidence of their misdeeds as a kind of perverse propaganda. This is NOT to say India as a whole, or even in the main, is misogynist and ultra-patriarchal. Another reason I'm calling this out as inaccurate is that it distances many first-worlders (for example, myself in the USA) from such behavior, but we know all too well that such behaviors are replicated at all levels of society from the lowest and most impoverished ghettos to the most advantaged, wealthy, and presumably cultured dynastic families. Technology in the form of social media enables others to see it and, in this particular instance, the distribution of the video documenting the crime has the effect (intended or not) of further repressing women who would dare to better themselves and their society (e.g. as health workers). What really saddens me (as well as reinforces the idea that the dissemination of the video reinforces misogyny) is the husband's reaction: > But in her home village, anger over Geeta's death is still > muted by questions about her honour. Even Geeta's own > husband, who eventually found out about the video from his > neighbours, shares the prevailing suspicion that she might > have done something to encourage the attack. "If she had > told me," he says, "we'd have asked her if it was done with > her consent. Then we'd have gathered the village elders to > decide what action should be taken." He shows no sign of > outrage about the rape, and has made no demands for police > action. EDIT: Formatting, punctuation, grammar, readability.
- ethanbond 10y ago
  Totally. We shouldn't be totally isolating ourselves and our own culture from this abominable behavior. Like every few months there's a similar story involving some top 10 football team getting away with the same shit.

0xmohit 10y ago

The court also asked the IT Ministry to examine what measures could be taken to block the online circulation of such videos. Wonder what can be done to block such incidents when ministers in Indian Parliament watch porn. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-09/indian-mps-busted-for-watching-porn/3819490 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-09/indian-mps-busted-for-... http://www.deccanherald.com/content/225344/karnataka-minister-caught-watching-porn.html http://www.deccanherald.com/content/225344/karnataka-ministe...

AlexeyBrin 10y ago
> Wonder what can be done to block such incidents when ministers in Indian Parliament watch porn. This has nothing to do with watching porn. Plenty of men watch porn and don't rape anyone. It has everything to do with a culture that blames the victim of a rape for the actual rape.
- drspacemonkey 10y ago
  While I don't disagree with you at all, the fact that "ministers in Indian Parliament watch porn" is meant literally makes me wonder what kind of overlap there is. These are elected officials watching porn on their phones during parliamentary sessions. I'm not saying that one causes the other, just that they both might be symptomatic of a related root cause.
  - dennisgorelik 10y ago
    Yes: that root cause is that men want sex. Now that you know that common cause - what's your next logical step?
- 0xmohit 10y ago
  The culture gets worse because those committing crimes get away so easily. More than 80% of rape incidents go unreported, and a small fraction of the accused in the remaining ones are convicted. And a fair number of ministers have been accused of rape.
- 10y ago

ensiferum 10y ago

Here's a tip for the indian women living in such fuck towns. Get a sturdy piece of food and whack some long rusty nails through it. Learn how to swing it. Carry it when you if you need to walk during dark/after hours.

AlexeyBrin 10y ago
> Here's a tip for the indian women living in such fuck towns. Get a sturdy piece of food and whack some long rusty nails through it. Learn how to swing it. Carry it when you if you need to walk during dark/after hours. Pretty sure this will get you raped and killed. Do you really think you can defend yourself from 3 men with some rusty nails ? The problem here is a cultural problem and you can (try to) solve it by changing the culture through education and law enforcement.
- joecool1029 10y ago
  I agree, though guns work better along this mindset because: 1. loud (even if you miss, people know something's up). 2. they don't require much physical strength. TBH, a loud device will probably do more good for deterrents than attempting to beat attackers with quiet sticks and nails. Active deterrents help, but limiting the places it can happen will do better than law enforcement ever will. Consider installing more toilets instead of shitting in open fields. Not only does it increase safety but there's a multitude of health benefits. http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/06/09/319529037/indias-rape-uproar-ignites-demand-to-end-open-defecation http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/06/09/319529037/i... http://www.india.com/lifestyle/indias-lack-of-toilets-is-contributing-to-the-countrys-rape-crisis-172523/ http://www.india.com/lifestyle/indias-lack-of-toilets-is-con...
  - badestrand 10y ago
    So you really think that half a billion guns in hands will make India safer? Apart from that, the family could not even afford a simple door, no way they can buy a gun then.
- ensiferum 10y ago

arpit 10y ago

Has an Indian male, reading about this stuff is both extremely horrifying and sadly familiar. What are the organizations and charities who are doing the best work to change this situation? I'd like to actively help.

rosalinekarr 10y ago

This is terrible, but blaming WhatsApp seems like a weird leap of logic. If someone harassed you over the phone, you wouldn't blame the telecom company. If someone sent you a death threat in the mail, you wouldn't sue the postal service. If someone hit you with their car, you wouldn't retaliate against the automaker. It seems like the BBC is just bringing up the name of the popular chat app as a way of generating more clicks. If their goal is raise awareness for the woman who died and people like her, that's noble but a bit misguided. If their goal is simply to generate more viewership and revenue for their website (which it seems like it is), it's deplorable.

vehementi 10y ago
What part of the article did you find was blaming WhatsApp here?
- afarrell 10y ago
  The title
kyle-w 10y ago
Are you kidding me? WhatsApp want to be in the hands of the uneducated and illiterate and Zuckerberg takes every chance he gets to say this is going to make the world a better place. If that's the claim they make, they better feel responsible when there are unintended consequences like rural men using the platform as a distribution system for illegal porn. If every time there are unintended consequences in software and bugs don't get filled, guess what the system does not fix itself. This has to be treated the same way.
- stinkytaco 10y ago
  >If every time there are unintended consequences in software and bugs don't get filled, guess what the system does not fix itself. This has to be treated the same way. I don't think this analogy really holds. It's not a "bug", the system works as intended. The big difference between a system like Facebook or WhatsApp and a telco is not that it's the responsibility of the platform -- WhatsApp is not encouraging abuse -- but the fact that abuse can be monitored for. This raises the interesting question of moral culpability. If the crime can be prevented with certain tools (in this case monitoring tools), is it the responsibility of the platform to do so? It seems that we are shifting more and more to the "yes" end of that spectrum.

cm3 10y ago

Some societies are worse than others, but if even in the self-proclaimed modern civilization of the western world professionals in the adult entertainment or sex/erotic services industry are treated like 2nd class citizens, there's a need for a more substantial shift in perception and treatment of something that's as natural as eating and sleeping. It's unnatural that many societies have created ways to suppress human nature in many ways they deem morally incorrect, and it's very wrong that laws reflect the moral world views of some. I won't go into how there used to be societies which in some regards were more open and safer than today's, or how the treatment by a part of some religious communities goes against those religions' core beliefs. Empowering people to defend themselves and deal with abuse in a dignified way is very important, and we first need to stop blaming victims as "promiscuous" or "having asked for it". This isn't very different from how we treat people who went to prison. EDIT: We also need to find a good way to investigate accusations without automatically assuming that, for instance, alleged male perpetrators are by default considered (not found, to be clear) guilty, or that wives do not abuse their husbands. The described societal defects are partly to blame, as are underequipped/unskilled law enforcement or judicial departments. If someone can lose their job and family because anybody merely publicly accuses them of a sex crime or adultery, then it's clear we have a problem on the other end of the spectrum. To me, both are caused by related societal flaws and will take a long time to correct. Another way this surfaces is that people tend to worry more about a government official's personal life than their positive/negative acts in office.

tptacek 10y ago
Up is down. Black is white. Pants are shirts. A story about a woman who was shamed into suicide by a culture --- one of the world's largest --- that blames women for their own violent rapes is evidence that society needs to correct its bias against men.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- cm3 10y ago
  And it may not have helped that the place in question has tribalism in place which classifies persons by their heritage in ways that are unimaginable to most of the HN crowd.

vehementi 10y ago

This makes my blood boil. This is the kind of thing that makes me surprised there aren't more vigilantes. Not from that dumpster fire village of course, but from some nearby place whose reputation is tarnished by association. I wouldn't condone that but given how furious I am right now I can't imagine being physically and emotionally close to the situation in the first place and there not being someone (perhaps more unstable) that wouldn't just go and take vengeance. > if by any chance they do lay their hands on a phone or use ear phones to listen to music, then they are branded 'characterless'" @#$%!

kyle-w 10y ago

This makes me so angry and upset. Facebook shouldn't just be holding developer conferences every year. This is way outside the scope of what Tech Companies skill sets can handle. There has to be open public acknowledgement of that at the highest levels and not just the usual PR. Unintended consequences of tech have to be treated in the same way we treat high priority bugs.

overcast 10y ago

Spent the month of March in India this year. It's so sad how the poor, women, and the overall environment are treated there. I think India has a lot to offer the world, but they've got a long way to go cleaning up many aspects of life there.

raisedadead 10y ago

I apologize for the incident, disgusted as I am with this, I just can't seemingly imagine what the women in the article went through. These things shove my proud Indian head into my own @#$%@! Yet would like to lay a different perspective: I am an Indian, an average tech professional, doing well in a good job, in a good city. Yes, the majority of my country is conservative. Yes, we have views that are biased against women. Do we have laws to protect them? Yes, we do. Do we have agencies to enforce them? Yes, we do. Do we have resources to support such agencies? Yes, we do. Yet we see these incidents happening in tens of villages, towns, cities happening every day. Sadly "MOST of them unreported", let alone, being investigated, and the perpetrators getting tried and punished. Trust me on this one, most walk away free, and that encourages them to do it yet again. The BIG question is then why is a basic safety not in place? You would say, isn't it the job of the law agencies to deal with this. Ugh, yeah... But blooper, a very good chunk of them are "corrupt". We are not backward in tech arena anymore, though we have WhatsApp in villages where we still have 2 hours of electricity per day. The technology is already in place, govt. orgs are all on Twitter, WhatsApp, etc. Do respond to requests and complaints (yeah you can tweet to our railway minister Mr.. Suresh Prabhu and he responds with immediate action, ex: https://twitter.com/baloomahapatra/status/792361492796637184 https://twitter.com/baloomahapatra/status/792361492796637184) It's just that the majority of masses are not "technically" educated enough to put it in use. They have access to weapons already (WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook), but just choose to use them against the good use they should be put to. You don't need guns when you have a pen (now internet). To me there are two possible ways to bring in some change to my sick country: 1) We tell the people of my country to take matters in their hand: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/16/india.gender https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/16/india.gender Yes, bring in the knives/guns, castrate the f@#$%ing bastards. 2) Educate, everyone when giving them access to the technology, the apps, the whole internet what they should be doing with it. The later is a more important step too. Google started an initiative to provide free high-speed internet access at major railway stations, and here is what Patna (capital of Bihar state) did with their free wifi card: http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2016/10/17/patna-is-the-no-1-user-of-googles-free-wi-fi-at-railway-stati/ http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2016/10/17/patna-is-the-no-1-us... Yes, Porn. ~~~ The whole point that I want to lay on the table, is we DESPERATELY need to bridge the gap between the cultural conservative "backwardness" and the rapid pace at which we are being given these tech gizmos to play with. I beg with my folded hands to the govt. To please use my tax money (increase it if need be), to educate the agencies, the village elders, the women who go out to those "doomed" towns of mine, and most IMPORTANTLY the god damned f%$#$# bastard perpetrators that the tech is there to make this country a much better place than it is. I am doing what I am able to, but if you are reading this please wish my country gets well soon. I am a proud Indian, in just 70 years we are beating the world to Mars, yet we have burning infernos in the towns, villages, and there are no fire trucks nearby.