Per Meta’s policies, it does not allow content that glorifies, endorses, or represents what Meta has designated as violent incidents, including “hate speech.” incidents” and “hate crimes”. Metta spokesperson Erin Logan told Wired that Metta “has strict policies against violent or graphic content on our platforms, and we enforce those rules impartially. will review and remove any infringing content and disable the accounts of repeat offenders.” Logan declined to answer the question of whether MetaGuy’s defenders were “violent or hateful “motivational groups” Last year, the company removed profiles linked to Mono Manesar, a cow vigilante who was arrested for inciting violence in Haryana.
Cow conservation is not new in India, where the Hindu religion holds the cow sacred. But the country also has a substantial minority population, including Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Adivasis, or indigenous peoples, who have no religious prohibition against eating beef. Dalits, who live at the bottom of the Hindu caste system, also sometimes eat beef. Due to their backward status, Muslims and especially Dalits have long been economically dependent on the cattle industry.
Since India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014, several states have passed stricter cow protection laws. A Congressional Research Service report released last week said cow protection is one of several forms of “religiously motivated oppression and violence” used by Hindus and the country’s Hindus against minority communities. Supported by a nationalist government. Cow protection was the motive behind 22 percent of all sectarian violence by Hindus against Muslims between 2019 and 2024, according to an April report from Armed Conflict Location and Incident Data.
“Landlords organize their targets to punish minorities through extrajudicial means,” says Angana Chatterjee, chair of the Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative at UC Berkeley. “Hindu nationalist leaders in the government have allied with these militias, and their speeches often serve as dog whistles to rally the people, allegedly inciting them to commit extrajudicial acts that have These include home invasion, theft and lynching.”
Chatterjee says publicizing the violence on a site like Instagram allows cow vigilantes to recruit new members in different parts of the country and rally other Hindu nationalists. “For Muslims and minorities and their allies, Instagram messaging counts as spreading terrorism,” she says. To signal, ‘Stop protesting. We’re coming for you and there’s no stopping us, especially since law enforcement is often either absent or complicit.
