Women aren’t being protected from online abuse - I’m reminded of this every time I open social media

Within the last hour, a single user had sent me 32 tweets. These included doctored images depicting me on fire, hanging dead from a noose, with a gun pointed at my head and covered in blood, staring up at the camera alongside two men with knives. He also sent me real footage of people being shot to death.

I tried to report the tweets, which must be reported individually – a significant undertaking for 32 tweets – but to no avail.

X responded that the violent images created of me and posted on their public platform did not violate their terms. When I tried to report the footage of people being killed – because surely this was illegal – X asked me to provide a death certificate for the deceased individuals, and to prove I was either a family member or a legal representative.

I could not, so this footage remains on the platform as well.

At this point, I’m not even surprised. As I’ve learned over the last seven weeks, X rarely actions abusive content against women, including rape and death threats, and men are typically permitted to threaten and terrorise women with impunity.

When I reported ‘deepfake’ porn made with my face and shared on the platform, X said it did not violate their policies, despite it constituting illegal image-based abuse created without my knowledge or consent and disseminated publicly.

While X is the most serious offender for enabling online abuse, it’s not just X. It’s been across social media platforms, and it has been relentless.

Our small team of women at Collective Shout, an Australian grassroots campaigning movement challenging the sexual exploitation of women and girls, have been subjected to an organised, global campaign of misogynistic threats and abuse following our victory in getting rape and incest games removed from a couple of popular gaming platforms.

Members of our team have been doxed, with email addresses, passwords, phone numbers and home addresses published online.

The abuse has been so bad that it has been condemned by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Reem Alsalem.

What this sustained attack on my colleagues and me has revealed is that there are no meaningful protections for women online.

A report by Australia’s eSafety Commission, Women’s experiences with online abuse in their working lives, found that women were disproportionately targeted in every form of online abuse and that they retreated from online spaces as a result, a “chilling effect” which limited women’s contributions and progress.

Essentially, when the online world is so hostile and unsafe for women, women are forced to remove themselves.

When the response from social media platforms is inadequate, and law enforcement fails to take action (I was handed a cyber-safety info sheet when I reported threats against my life), what are women to do?

I don’t know what the answer is, but something needs to change. The cost to women, and to society as a whole, is too great.

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Caitlin Roper is Campaigns Manager at Collective Shout.

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