Hello to all 122,000+ of you!
Much has happened since the last update. Meta (Facebook), Google, Twitter and TikTok announced commitments to fight online gender-based violence facilitated by their platforms at the United Nations’ Generation Equality forum in the summer of 2021, following policy design workshops I also took part in, facilitated by the World Wide Web Foundation.
Still, almost one year on, not much has changed and the visibility and safety of bodies online is still at risk. Some examples:
- A report by the Center For Countering Digital Hate found that Instagram has failed to tackle online abuse, especially against women and femme presenting people and especially when it comes via direct message;
- In the summer of 2021, OnlyFans initially announced it was banning adult content, potentially leaving its main user base – sex workers, already affected by the closure of their workplaces during the pandemic – without a job. Although OnlyFans reversed its decision, the campaign for a sex-free Internet continues, featuring payment providers, social networks and a variety of extremist lobbies coalising to banish nudity and sex from platforms;
- TikTok updated its community guidelines to avoid recommending nudity and dangerous activities, affecting everyone from pole dancers to artists to the kink community;
- While I was able to help a few users recover their deleted Instagram accounts, the platform have since told me that they will not be looking into deletions unless users go through their (lengthy and confusing) official appeals system;
- Continuous changes in Instagram and TikTok’s algorithm leave creators none the wiser about the performance of their content, their ability to express themselves and reach new audiences and, crucially, their ability to make a living;
- Last but not least, after the already tragic impact of FOSTA/SESTA, new laws that might cleanse the Web of bodies, nudity and sex are popping up worldwide – the United Kingdom’s proposed Online Safety Bill being only one example.
In this increasingly sex-averse online world, users who post nudity, sex and bodies have very little tools to recover their lost content or profiles, and to fight censorship and online abuse. This is why, as part of my new job as Innovation Fellow at the Centre for Digital Citizens, I am launching a new (anonymous) survey to better understand users’ experiences of online censorship and online abuse. If you’d like to share your experiences to help me create more knowledge for all of us on this, you can do it here: https://nupsych.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_77jwpZuwVnTNcvI
As you will see, to take part you must be over 18 years old, and have experienced account and/or content deletion and negative comments simultaneously. Feel free to share it with fellow users who might want to share their experiences.
Thank you for your support and all the best
Carolina
P.S. For a deeper look into platform censorship and more backgrounds on some of the things written above, you can read my research / blogs below.
Research papers:
- ‘A corpo-civic space: A notion to address social media’s corporate/civic hybridity.’ First Monday.
- ‘The Shadowban Cycle: an autoethnography of pole dancing, nudity and censorship on Instagram.’ Feminist Media Studies.
- ‘Sex in the Shadows of Celebrity.’ Porn Studies (co-written with Prof. Susanna Paasonen).
Blogs: