Should Social Networking Sites Like Orkut be Banned?

The recent happenings in Mumbai have once again raised questions over the existence of social networking sites like orkut.com. While the Shiv Sainiks have made violent protests against the use of these sites because of some derogatory remark against its party supremo and against Shivaji, the Mumbai Police also seems to have been keen on getting the site banned.

The orkut site has been very popular lately, and has been attracting many users who do social networking, meet and keep in touch with old friends, develop new friendships, discuss issues, voice their opinions on issues they feel about strongly or just have fun. There are communities on orkut ranging from ‘Social Development’, ‘Venture Capitalists’, ‘I love My Dad’, ‘I love Maggi’, ‘I want to kill Himesh Reshammiya’ etc. etc. etc. Here comes the thing of freedom of expression again, and the site promotes that.

Personally, I have found wonderful use of this site. Though I do not participate much in the communities of orkut, I have found many old, long lost friends on orkut, who I had never expected to meet again, and getting back in touch with them has been an absolute pleasure. Again, keeping in touch with your friends and associates or just dropping a short message has never been easier. One never forgets birthdays anymore, as they are listed on orkut. We even had a small reunion of school friends who had lost touch over time but again got back through orkut.

That was the good part. But there is an ugly side to it too. There are many emails floating around, many news articles from time to time, telling us about unpleasant incidents that happened over the sites. A girl and a boy meeting through orkut and setting up a date, where the girl is later found murdered in a hotel room, or about terrorists being active on the sites, harassment, sexual threats, misuse of pictures, intimidation are quite commonplace. Then there are offensive communities. There was a community, ‘I Hate India’, which showed the picture of burning of the Indian flag. Also there are porn communities, communities spreading hatred or violence and all such sorts. Now here it is that how far can such freedom of expression be taken?

Is banning the site a solution to all these problems? To some extent, maybe yes. You cannot, in the name of freedom of expression, allow such things to go on which puts to risk the privacy, safety and lives of people. But then these are things that happen in the society, with or without orkut. Even without orkut, there were still crimes in the society. As in everything else, nothing works more than self censorship. One should choose for oneself whether one wants privacy and be a member of such a site or not, or put one’s picture in the site or not. Also, the discretion to go out with someone that one has met only online is exercised by the person who goes out, and as in all cases, restrain has to be maintained in that, and such cases happen not only when people go out with someone they have met on orkut or elsewhere. Infact, one cannot put the entire blame on orkut for all the mishaps that have happened.

So, what is the solution? I guess banning the site is not the solution. Then even emails and mobile phones and cameras and many many such things will need to be banned because these have also been the medium of many crimes and harassments. The solution is not in banning the site and gagging the freedom of expression, but then for the promoters of the site to come up with as many possible ways that the misuse of the site can be stopped, like preventing the photos to be easily copied from the site, which has been one of the easiest way of harassing and impersonating people.