In what seems like a targeted cyber attack to down vote Republic TV’s ratings, social media warriors have rolled up their sleeves and are out and about giving 1 star rating and negative review on Republic TV’s Facebook page. While it is unclear where it originated, but it seems Republic TV has reported something which has offended Kerala Leftists who have come down all guns blazing at Arnab.
This was also shared by various troll groups. One point agenda to down vote Republic TV’s Facebook page.
And after they were done down voting it on Facebook, they turned their attention to Play Store:
This is not the first time cyber warriors have taken to social media to “teach someone a lesson”. Earlier too, some people have taken to social media and down-voting apps when they do not agree to their views.
In 2015, Snapdeal received a lot of flak from angry right wingers when Aamir Khan thought the country is intolerant. It was also accused that this piece of down voting was ‘championed’ by the BJP and was termed as bullying by some eminent media persons:
https://twitter.com/BDUTT/status/669747254857592832
Similarly, down voting of “journalist” Barkha Dutt’s book The Unquiet Land on Amazon was called misogynist and was also referred to as “trolling” by journalists and politicians, alike:
https://twitter.com/quizderek/status/876255266475360256
Sagarika Ghose, too, had her book down voted on Amazon, where she blamed the “idiot troll army” for down rating it:
https://twitter.com/sagarikaghose/status/881895352474812417
One wonders what has Republic TV done in past 24 hours to draw so much flak from Keralites? One theory is that Republic TV has been vocal about the killings of the RSS workers allegedly carried out by CPI(M) workers in Kerala, which has pissed many leftists off:
https://twitter.com/republic/status/893517963067670528
It remains to be seen whether this bullying of Republic TV too results in a similar outrage and whether these negative reviews are dubbed as an “attack on the media”.
Update: This organised attempt to teach Republic TV a ‘lesson’ is now taking both tragic and comic shapes. On one hand, people are now getting abusive towards those who support Republic TV, while on other hand, they are down-rating similar sounding applications on Google playstore:
https://twitter.com/muglikar_/status/895141589160534016