Evidence that the internet can be a weird and creepy place surfaces every once in a while. In November, Tejaswini Naik, a film industry professional in Mumbai made a gruesome discovery on YouTube. She found several videos featuring children being made to speak lines that are sexual, racist and hateful.
As she noted in her Change.org petition to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki:
I recently stumbled across a series of very disturbing videos on YouTube. Each video shows Indian children in a village sitting in front of a blackboard out in the open. They are being taught to say lines in English. The lines vary from video to video. “Adolf Hitler did nothing wrong.” “Feminism is Cancer.” Soon the lines get obscene. “I’m not gay, but $20 is $20.” “I get more a** than a toilet seat.”
There was more to come.
Naik says she noticed other lines that had “worse content with filthy words that I won’t repeat. These lines are blatantly racist, sexual and filled with hatred. And the videos feature 8 to 10-year-old Indian children saying these lines.”
Who’s Behind the Videos?
According to Naik, a self-proclaimed teacher was making money by getting the children utter these lines and uploading the videos, all for 5 dollars each.
Her petition began gathering steam and within weeks she had crossed 50,000 signatures. Even better, YouTube took down most of the offending videos. In a petition update, she declared:
Thank you everyone for your amazing support. Once we confirm that all the videos have indeed been taken down and the children are safe, we can declare this amazing campaign a victory! In the meanwhile, it would be great if you could all spread the word and rally more support so that we can show the world that India will not sit quietly while our children are exploited!
Naik says she will be able to declare victory once all the videos are taken down. That would be a massive leap for her campaign. But it would be only a small (albeit crucial) step in the overall fight against the abuse of children online.
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