Large social networks want to better protect women from online violence

Unfortunately, the past few years have shown that women are still significantly more likely to experience violence or harassment on social media than male users. Out a brochure of the European Institute for Gender Issues, it becomes clear that every tenth woman from the age of 15 has already experienced some form of violence on the Internet, and there does not seem to be an end in the near future.

Therefore, Twitter, TikTok, Google and Facebook set new goals on Thursday on the UN forum on gender equality. Accordingly, the largest operators of social networks want to provide more tools in the next few years to increase the safety of women on their platforms.

To this end, the World Wide Web Foundation held consultations last year and took a closer look at gender-specific online violence and the abuse behind it. One result of this was that women usually want more control over the networks. It should be possible to restrict who is allowed to reply to comments and what content should appear in the chronicle at what time.

The problem with the previously published declarations, however, is that no specific measures have been given a deadline; moreover, reference is only ever made to the consequences and the location of the abuse. The people who actually exercise the violence were less in the foreground.

This leaves the problem that social networks tend to act reactively instead of proactively getting in their way. Although the actors mentioned above speak of “obligations”, there are no consequences or penalties that actually bind companies to them. Thus, good intentions initially remain just that: intentions.

Own opinion:

Basically, the internet and social networks like Facebook, Instagram or TikTok have become dangerous places. In some cases, there is content on the platforms that should be removed at the time of publication; when it comes to security, one usually only refers to ongoing efforts. However, as long as there are no consequences, online security will not be a priority for corporations.

Via The Verge