Two days after the Facebook page of Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) – a one-of-its-kind collective by women in Malayalam film industry – came under an organised mass down-rating campaign, the forum said on Wednesday that such cyber attacks cannot discourage them.
Over the past two days, several users descended on their Facebook page to give a 1 star rating and verbally abuse them for “speaking against megastar Mammootty.” This was after WCC shared an article on misogyny in Malayalam cinema that named actors Mammootty and Dileep, among others.
Following the attack, WCC proceeded to take down the article on misogyny, for which it received another round of abuse online.
Issuing a statement for the first time since the mass down-rating campaign against their Facebook page began, the forum made it clear that the attacks have little effect on their activities.
“We are well aware that the ratings on an organisation’s Facebook page is not what determines its credibility. However, since we were subjected to a second round of cyber attacks, we believe we have the responsibility to our well-wishers to explain what happened,” WCC said in a post in Malayalam.
Speaking about the DailyO article written by Anand Kochukudy that was shared on WCC’s official Facebook page, the statement read:
“This article spoke about misogyny in Malayalam cinema and named a few male actors. People mistook that we had written the article and attacked us viciously. Following this, we took down the post. The reason for taking it down was that the opinions expressed in the article were not ours.”
They added that they are working towards ensuring that there was a healthy and cordial relationship between men and women in the industry.
“Our intention is not to hurt anyone's sentiments. Such cyber attacks cannot discourage us or affect the causes for which we are working,” they added.
The total number of reviews on the page massively shot up to 33,000 on Thursday, with over 25,000 users giving it a 1 star rating. The down-rating campaign started two days ago and brought the rating of the page down to 2.4; the rating currently stands at 1.9.
Ever since the down-rating campaign gained momentum, there were also users who rated the page positively for showing the courage to give shape to a forum exclusively for women.
Several people, including popular writer KR Meera, had come out in support of WCC, even calling it a “historic movement.”