Ban on Orkut?? Are you insane?

I am commenting on the newly started debates over the wrong message giving communities, especially through Orkut and not only debates and talk shows but even cases are started to be filed. The fundamentalist are with the arguments over communities like “We hate India”, “Call Girls from Mumbai” and so and so. There are also communities offending Indian holy God and Goddesses and yes, it is justified when you say that something should be done in regards to this, but A Ban???? No way ……

First let me present some facts about Orkut. Before Orkut and other such sites, the way to talk to people; whom you really never going to meet usually as they are very much away from you in distance or they are from very much different backgrounds or they belong to some other class of society or they might be belonging to some other country; was through messengers and chat rooms. But it was something very unstable; it was much easy to create a fake ID in minute and then login into some chat room to meet a new world, completely hiding your identity. It was never easy to trace someone, if offending or abusing in some public room. Ofcourse, the option to report someone abuse was there but practically that was not that effective. Moreover, at each login the crowd and the names in chat rooms were different, so people were tending to move into in initial days and then out with some IDs and then constrained within only those persons. It was sure spoiling the concept of an open world and was not enough to create a more reliable, stable world, in which you could meet some real persons, who might think about you selflessly and could provide a real positive and third person perspective about your problems.

So, websites like Orkut and Hi!! came in existence as answers to the loopholes in chat rooms and messenger services. Don’t compare it with dating sites like AdultFriendFinder as the motive and categories of both the sites are completely different from each other.

Orkut!! First of all, for moving into Orkut, you need a valid invitation from someone else and it will be kept in the database of Orkut and also the person, who has given you the invitation to join the community will be joined in you friend list. So, it was the initial phase. Now, let me tell you the things more categorically. The template of Orkut for presenting someone’s profile was much easier and also easy to maintain and day by day, it was changing for better and better and also with continuous removal of drawbacks. First of all, to get attention, one needs to make a profile, which will be having three sections; General information, professional information and then personal information. Although user is free to put only that information as he/she wishes, but even then it imposes a restriction as then your profile will not seem much attractive to others. Next phase is pictures, which is actually creating a problem for management purposes as well as creating problems like nude pics here too. But this (snaps) is sure one of the most prominent and honest way to attract people to you and also it is scientific fact that people remember faces more than names. So, definitely keeping pics in profile was justified, although it is sure a burden to web-space management of Google, who now owns this community.

The best feature of Orkut is its open scrapbook and completely accessible friend network, which guarantees that it is not that easy to create a fake identity and then being suddenly disappeared without leaving a trace behind you, as definitely, one’s friend network is likely to contain many real friends because as far as being friend is concerned then it is completely up to you. Watch someone’s acts and collect information about him/her from his/her social circle and then you could formally ask for friendship. Now as about open and accessible by anyone Scrap Book also presents a third person perspective of any user means a close view of the way of talking of some person and also a picture of that what other people think about the one as writing scraps to someone is like speaking in public and all this even before actually talking/chatting to the person. Definitely, it is much more reliable than ever.

Now, coming to more issues, Orkut is one site which is not supporting any kind of advertisements and also users are not allowed to post picture messages in open scrap books, they could only put pictures as display pics of their own identity or their community display pics.

As was the main issue of offending communities, then I think it is easier to encounter with nude pics and offers while surfing even Government and New sites, because of Spywares and Non-existence of any policy to stop such advertisements. Most of the time, Spywares sets cookies for them in your PC and then they will continue to come again and again, without you actually ask for them.

Anyway, I was moving to technical side, let me keep it simple. Like the real world, where it is always possible to get magazines and a lot of other adult material, how was it possible to keep it completely away from Net world and even from Orkut world.

Orkut has become such a large network, which contains students from each and every big institution and professionals from each and every big or small company (even if Orkut is banned in that company). If you are looking for some odd names as community then you should also check that there are communities from names almost all the big companies and institution, who are really providing the way to communicate between alumnae, batchmates and juniors. When in this world getting jobs and motivations for right side is getting rare and rarer, and then being at a place, where you could really come to meet much experienced and co-operating persons to consult about anything even before doing anything. Getting links in the industry was always a problem for everyone even if they were having one, then sometimes the changing contacts and fields were creating problems. Definitely traditional flaws like immature affections, addiction and habitual ignorance to the real world are here too but this could be said to be much mature form of conversation at the global level. I have found a lot of my seniors from very old batches working for big companies and many of them have provided my friends even shelters and supports in their cities and even in countries even on meeting for the very first time. In now days, when someone from professional courses got selected into Infosys then he/she first check for the profile in the Infosys community, so that could get in touch with some of them before actually joining or not joining them. Can’t people look at this positive side? As about bad things then really there are very few as the members of Orkut mostly are from educated youth from all over the world, so are much active in offending such nasty attempts and offending communities as soon as they got to know about them.

As about offending communities, then I, myself have seen even the honest attempt was getting tempered in these way, when some people started to use the popularity and coverage of Orkut as a medium to spread their products and thoughts means purely for business purposes. But it was really not that easy as Orkut provides you the way to make someone spam by just clicking a button. As about community, then I think for the first time, I encounter with a bad community three months ago, which was seriously offending “Goddess Durga”. As legal ways exists in the real world, there were ways too, I made the request spreading out to report this community and its owner as bogus and it worked. According to rules of Orkut, if more than 100 different users reports someone or some community bogus, then Orkut automatically removes that and this is really quick. After that I got similar message back to me about the community named “We Hate India”, whose most of the members were from Pakistan and one Hindu girl and a few Muslim boys from
India too. Definitely, it was an offending material and got the same fate means got deleted by Orkut, because of active participation of Orkut users to keep the place neat and clean.

I am afraid that because of popularity of Orkut, now Politicians and News Personals are pointing their guns to Orkut as they done in case of blogs few months ago. It is something like keeping females under curtains to keep them away from bad eyes or campaigning for banning Co-Education Institutions as they leads to love affairs. But it is not funny anymore.

The concept of banning blogs came from such a part of society, who was standing in favour of paintings of “Maqbool Fida Hussain” in the name of “Right to speak”. Definitely, blogs were a strong enough medium for professionals and intelligent students to express, when even Political Parties and TV-Channel were being suppressed from speaking anything against the issue, which was clearly looking to be completely out of logic but we were not having any power to do something as we have chosen the Government for five years and when after fighting to each other in most intense way in West Bengal, they come to join their hands to form the Government, then they are really not responsible or answerable to anyone. What a helpless crowd of much qualified students could do about it? Not all of them are in journalism and not all of them could take parts in ‘Dharanas’ and ‘Stirrs’, ofcourse, blogs are only medium to such crowd, who even on being right side and doing all hard works, feel helpless. What you could expect from News Channels and New Papers, when they are in either direct or indirect control of Government, because their dependency about license renewals and paper permits?

Anyway, I am again moving away from the main topic. Yes! Some bad elements are popping in Orkut too now and definitely it is likely to be increased more and more as now News Channels and Fundamentalist have moved in the way to publicize the few bad spots only on the almost perfectly clear white wall. But as like the real world, we have weapons against such things (like reporting them as bogus) and till yet, we have been using our rights in right ways.

In now days, Blogs and Orkut like sites came as the most prominent medium for highly qualified, undoubtedly talented and very judgmental youth of nation, so I request from Orkut Supporters to much much more active to avoid and restrict such activities and from Fundamentalist to keep their eyes away from us.

Definitely, there are a lot of things to speak but I know this is your time to speak, so I will wait for comments from reader’s side.