Clubhouse chatrooms of hate and misogyny

Are social intermediaries responsible for the content posted on their platforms?

“Muslims Gals are More Beautiful Than Hindu Gals (Gals Opinion”). This was the name of a discussion forum that was opened on the social audio app Clubhouse on January 17 — communal, but relatively mild words which the moderator even tagged as ‘opinion’. However, going by a recording that went viral on Twitter later, what transpired in that forum was anything but mild. As the language used is not fit to be reproduced here, we will paraphrase it as misogyny in the extremes, communalism, communalism targeting Muslim women in particular, misogyny targeting Hindu women, the promotion of rape, incest, and more. Two moderators of this session went under the username ‘Kira XD’. Kira XD and several others from the session were also involved in another Clubhouse discussion on the same day named “Girls don’t have privilege to marry upper caste boys”, from where similar misogynistic remarks were recorded.

The recordings from the two sessions resulted in an outcry and . The Mumbai Police have arrested three men, from Karnal in Haryana, including Akash Suyal (19) a.k.a. Kira XD. The arrest was based on a complaint from a Mumbai woman who stated that one of the arrested had hosted a Clubhouse session in November last year in which a female friend of hers was “auctioned.”