01 December,2020 08:08 AM IST | Mumbai | mid-day online correspondent
Twitter/Siwggy
Food delivery company Swiggy decided to weigh in to the ongoing online debate surrounding the farmers' protest and it landed them in troubled waters. The controversy started when Swiggy responded to a satirical post from Nirmala Sitharaman's parody account on Twitter.
"Had an argument with my Bhakt friend over a farmers protest. He said that we are not dependent on farmers for food. We can always order food from Swiggy. He won," read the tweet from the parody account.
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To this, Swiggy responded, "sorry, we can't refund education".
This response prima facie looks like Swiggy meant to call them uneducated who believe food delivery companies are not dependent on farmers.
Swiggy's response soon went viral raking up thousands of likes and retweets. However, a large chunk of the Twitter population found the response offensive and #BoycottSwiggy started trending.
Read: Twitterati threaten to boycott Zomato after Swara Bhasker asked it to 'stop funding hate'
While some requested corporates to stop hiring "woke" employees, others shared screenshots of them uninstalling the app.
Not long, Swiggy's counterpart, Zomato found itself in a similar situation when it left a non-committal note below Swara Bhasker's tweet asking them to not fund news channels that "spread hate."
"Hey @zomatoin @zomato @deepigoyal I'm your regular customer.. do u plan to #DefundTheHate & pull your ads from hate espousing channels like @Republic_Bharat ? I'm not okay with my money even indirectly funding this kind of communal bigoted hate! Pls let your consumers know.." Swara Bhasker had tweeted.
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To which Zomato has said, "we are looking into this."
Many Twitter users thought that Zomato's response is indicative that they might pull back their ads from Republic TV and that had caused a massive outrage against Zomato.
While the Zomato controversy died down in a couple of days, it will be interesting to see how long the #boycottswiggy trend continues.
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