Social media threat

THEY say cricket is a religion in India; and in the case of Virat Kohli, he is an idol who more than one billion Indians worship.

However, this level of devotion took a sinister turn earlier this week when a member of staff at a Crown Resorts Hotel in Perth, went into Kohli’s empty bedroom and filmed for over a minute before uploading the footage on social media.

An incensed Kohli said he was “appalled” by this “absolute invasion of privacy”, adding that he had been left “very paranoid” after the incident and was not “okay with fanaticism”.

And why would the former India captain not be paranoid? Nothing was left off camera – his bed, bathroom, clothes, trainers, medicines.

A Crown Resorts spokesperson said they had taken “immediate steps to rectify the issue, including launching an investigation, and standing down the individuals involved. The original video was also swiftly removed from the social media platform.” But this isn’t good enough. The issue here is that the video should never have been allowed to be uploaded in the first place.

There is no regulator for social media content. And that’s why some of the most disturbing material imaginable can be found on the web.

Some might argue that no harm was done. Kohli wasn’t ‘hurt’.

But imagine if he had been in the room. Imagine, god forbid, the intruder had gone into his room and Kohli was there and he attacked the cricketer and decided to film it. Would there be anything stopping him from uploading the footage on to social media?

The Christchurch mass shootings in 2019 when terrorist Brenton Tarrant live-streamed himself walking into mosques in New Zealand and killing 51 people should have been a wake-up call, but it clearly wasn’t.

And as long as authorities turn a blind eye to posts on platforms run by social media giants, more people like Kohli will be left paranoid by material being shared online without their permission.