The Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy has threatened to take legal action against Facebook. Subramanian Swamy, a grand poobah of Virat Hindus is well known for doing a parody. This is the reason why he falls into a conflict of what is known on the Internet. Named after Nathan Poe, the law suggests that “unless you add a smiley or a blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of extremism or fundamentalism that someone won’t mistake for the real thing.”
Here is Subramaniam Swamy. There is a small difference between this name and the original is that the first name ends with m not n.
Here is the sample recent post from the parody Facebook account:
The below post from Swamy facebook account that has been declared approval by himself, although it is maintained by the ShankhNaad team.
The perfect depiction of Poe’s law having many people liked the parody account thinking that it is an original account. Swamy found out and was unhappy for the person who runs the parody.
He wrote on his Twitter account which he runs himself saying that ” Desperate Congi&Aaptards seeing the huge knockout response of PTs have resorted to parody accounts. Facebook must act or face legal notice.” Swamy threatened to take legal action against those using his carefully built brand in the name of humor.
Desperate Congi&Aaptards seeing the huge knock out response of PTs have resorted to parody accounts.Facebook must act or face legal notice
— Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) December 14, 2014
This resulted in few funny reactions from the parody itself.
The FB page might not be for a long time. Actually, Facebook doesn’t take too kindly to parody accounts, insisting that everyone has to use their real, authentic names. Its policy, as mentioned here, makes it clear: “Pretending to be anything or anyone is not allowed.” Which means one of the better internet parody accounts could disappear at any given time.
“Many people have suggested that we change the name so that we can at least run the page,” said the creator of the page, a software developer from Bangalore who asked to remain unidentified. “I’m not worried if it is taken down by Facebook, but until it is there, it will remain Subramaniam Swamy.”
The account creator said that he started the page in June, after noticing how blindly people would follow the posts put up by Swamy and the ShankNaad team, which resulted seeming as if the whole world attacks Hindus. He then got to prove this when some joke posts of his own ended up not only being shared by original Swamy fans but also being protected by them.
“It was quite disturbing to see people just blindly follow him. So I thought this would be a fun way to counter that. And what has happened is that many people who are his own supporters end up reposting and sharing this page, and even defending things we’ve written, like the Monalisa Shah post,” he said. “It’s also funny, some of his biggest supporters block the page when they realize what it is, but also people who hate him block the page, because they think it is him.”