Tweaking tech to weed out online trolls and bullies

OYO used Online Relationship Management to bring down their troll numbers from 3500 in 2020 to just a handful in 2022

Trolling, hate speech, and bullying are commonplace on the internet, inflicting emotional stress on online victims. A bigger problem is that social media platforms refuse to intervene, citing free speech.

When the brand OYO, realised that the trolling and harassment on their social media platforms was driving women away, they decided to be proactive instead of ignoring the problem.

"Our women following was low," said Mayur Hola, Senior Vice President – Global Head of Brand, OYO, to DH. "In terms of business, when consideration falls amongst our women audience, it impacts overall brand consideration. So, we had to make our handles a safe and welcome place for a crucial cohort for OYO's brand health."

In 2020, they launched the "Safe Spaces" initiative, using Online Relationship Management (ORM) technology. While many companies use ORM to tackle complaints and escalations, OYO's ORM team started using the tech to call the trolls out for their offensive comments and pinning them up for all to see. They schooled trollers to spread positivity and cheer to change the individual behaviour and response of those posting hate on the platform.

Also Read — Are laws against online harassment enough?

"We first identified offensive comments through ORM," explains Hola, adding that ORM responds daily to help manage and solve complaints and escalations. "We transformed this mechanism into a first responder that supports women and corrects lewd behaviour with customised comments and public schooling of trolls, reinforcing positivity across OYO's social media platforms."

Today, OYO is down from 3500 trolls in 2020 to just a handful in 2022. From only 20 per cent trolls in 2020, nearly 46.9 per cent in 2021 apologised or deleted their comments on their platform. There was also an 84 per cent drop in disrespectful posting across their handles, which is even lower in 2022. Since then, they've managed to add 5500 women followers on social media.

"Nobody has used ORM like this before us," said Hola. "We had to build our first responder training from scratch and ensure the team works efficiently to manage escalations and trolls."

"While escalation management follows a set SoP, troll thrashing is about nuanced writing. It demands that we maintain a balance between being firm and polite. Having zero tolerance for trolling, yet never lowering ourselves to their level. It's tricky and requires years of training. Trolls are the vermin of the social media world, and it takes a bloody-minded approach to weed them out one by one!"

While there aren't too many companies in India implementing this, Hola encourages more of them to get started. However, he warns that tackling trolls is an ongoing and long-term initiative.

Neeti Jaychander is a journalist, writer and lecturer based in Chennai.

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