A viral video brought accredited fertility dietitian and content creator Gurneet Kaur new audiences, but also a wave of racist comments, threatening messages and hate followers. For Pritampal Singh and Bonnie Dhillon, sharing their cross-cultural marriage journey on 'The Dhillon Diaries' has also meant confronting racist slurs in their comment sections. This podcast examines the rise of online racism targeting Indian-origin creators and the challenges of combating digital abuse.
Key Points
- Australian-Punjabi content creators are reporting a rise in online abuse, with racist comments increasingly targeting their social media posts.
- Creators and the Australian Human Rights Commissioner are calling for stronger regulation, saying current platform reporting systems are failing to effectively address the issue.
Gurneet Kaur is an accredited fertility dietitian who helps young women navigate their reproductive health through daily nutrition and lifestyle tips on Instagram.
She is a second-generation Australian Punjabi, based in Perth, who has always called Australia home, but not everyone has made her feel welcome.
“I have experienced racism at every age, in high school, at work, even in primary school,” she told SBS Punjabi.
The racism she has experienced offline has also extended to her social media account.
One of my videos went viral and I noticed racist comments flooding in — “Go back to India", "we don’t need Indians here”.Gurneet Kaur
A user also threatened her in a private message after searching for her registration and other business details.
Gurneet isn’t alone.
Pritampal Singh Dhillon migrated to Australia in 2014 and met Australian-born Bonnie five years later. The pair share cross-cultural content exploring their relationship, humour and social commentary on their page.
We get hundreds of comments, mostly saying ‘go back to your country’ or ‘deport them’.Pritampal Singh Dhillon
"They tell Bonnie, "you’ve ruined our genes" and make many comments that are too disgusting to repeat,” Pritampal told SBS Punjabi.
Bonnie said the comments have become increasingly severe. “We’ve been making content for the last three years, and in the last six months we’ve seen an extreme level of abuse. There have been threats and even death threats online.”
Both creators resorted to blocking and reporting accounts on Instagram, but were unhappy with the social media platform's response.
“We do report accounts that are really aggressive. We get a reply months later saying they didn’t remove the account. Most accounts were faceless — where do you even start with keeping them accountable?” Bonnie recalled.
Addressing the rise of online racism, Australian Human Rights Commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman said that anonymous abuse on social media remains difficult to address.
I’m saddened but not surprised to hear that Indian online creators are experiencing an increase in racism.Giridharan Sivaraman
Speaking about the difficulty of holding anonymous social media users accountable, he highlighted the challenges of regulating third-party platforms.
“You, as the person who's posting online, has very little capacity to do anything, particularly when the attacker is anonymous. I think that what we need is probably government lobbying to better regulate social media platforms,” he suggested.
For Australians experiencing serious online abuse, eSafety says users should first report harmful content to the platform or service where it appears. If the platform does not take action and the material meets the criteria, a report can be submitted to eSafety.
Although such abuse has taken a toll on these creators, they say backing down isn’t on the cards.
Gurneet believes “people get triggered because I am successful, I’m going to continue showing up.”
Pritampal and Bonnie said their comments section motivated them to respond to racist beliefs with educational content.
“We are trying to challenge misinformation in any way we can. We don't want to fight anybody; we want people to take a moment and think a bit more clearly.”
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