'Human Rights by Design: The Responsibilities of Social Media Platforms to Address Gender‐Based Violence Online' by Nicolas Suzor, Molly Dragiewicz, Bridget Harris, Rosalie Gillett, Jean Burgess and Tess Van Geelen in (2018)
Policy and Internet comments
Gender‐based violence [GBV] online is rampant, ranging from harassment of women who are public figures on social media to stalking intimate partners using purpose‐built apps. This is not an issue that can be addressed by individual states alone, nor can it be addressed satisfactorily through legal means. The normalization of misogyny and abuse online both reflects and reinforces systemic inequalities. Addressing gender‐based violence online will require the intervention of the technology companies that govern the commercial Internet to prevent and combat abuse across networks and services. We argue that international human rights instruments provide an opportunity to identify with more precision the responsibilities of telecommunications companies and digital media platforms to mitigate harm perpetrated through their networks, and ensure that the systems they create do not reproduce gendered inequality. Finally, we present initial recommendations for platforms to promote human rights and fulfill their responsibilities under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
The authors conclude
Online gender‐based violence is increasingly recognized as a major human rights problem (Amnesty International, 2018; Lewis, Rowe, & Wiper, 2017; OHCHR, 2017; United Nations Human Rights Council, 2018). Just like the discriminatory attitudes that engender them, solutions are complex. GBV occurs on a continuum that encompasses a range of behaviors from the routine forms of normalized harassment and abuse to criminal acts. Competing rights and jurisdictional issues will require multifaceted strategies to address GBV. Government intervention alone will not be sufficient to challenge and address systemic inequality, discrimination, and abuse. Ultimately, discriminatory attitudes are produced and reproduced across communities and cultures, including on the Internet, and these are what need to change to reduce GBV.
We suggest that the next steps in a multifaceted response to online GBV requires open discussion and debate as well as empirical research to better understand peoples’ lived experiences of online GBV. While excellent work is emerging (see e.g., Chatterjee et al., 2018; Dragiewicz et al., 2018; Freed et al., 2017, 2018; Lewis et al., 2017; Salter, 2017; Woodlock, 2017), more research is needed to understand the landscape of GBV and responses to it online. In particular, empirical research is needed in order to produce evidence to guide international efforts to modify and use Internet architecture to address GBV. Scholars can investigate the meaning and impact of GBV online as well as the behaviors and technologies involved. Research with Internet users and avoiders can help us understand the positive and negative uses of the Internet for achieving gender equality and addressing GBV. Ample research documents the gendered digital divide, but it is mostly descriptive and concerned with the percentage of populations accessing the Internet, how often, using which platforms, and to a lesser extent, for what (see e.g., UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development Working Group on Broadband and Gender, 2015). These crude measures fail to capture cultural contributing factors that are important to understand benefits and barriers to Internet use for people of all genders.
In addition (and in parallel) to more research, more experimentation is needed to understand how telecommunications and Internet intermediaries can adopt their infrastructure, policies, procedures, and socio‐technical affordances to tackle the spectrum of GBV. This work is still in very early stages, and scholars and civil society advocates are leading the way in articulating what societies are entitled to expect from technology firms. Ongoing collaborations between tech firms and civil society have started to bear very promising fruit, but a great deal more work remains to be done. In this regard, while the aspirational principles articulated in human rights documents may seem idealistic, we see them as a key part of an ongoing set of efforts to ensure that our globally shared digital infrastructure and the multitude of communications services that build upon it are designed and deployed in a way that respects and promotes human rights. By no means will nonbinding principles be sufficient; but as Esquivel and Sweetman (2016, p. 2) argue, “international agreements have been hugely important in directing policy decisions and resource flows to social goods, acting as a rallying cry for those fighting injustice and marginalisation, and influencing the cultural and social norms which we all live by.”
States also have an important role to play in addressing GBV online. Nation states retain primary responsibility to develop domestic laws that can effectively protect human rights, and states should take much more urgent action to address what appears to be a rapidly growing problem (Jane, 2017; UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development Working Group on Broadband and Gender, 2015). One of the key challenges for states is to ensure that the Internet intermediaries within their jurisdictions work to effectively address GBV online on their networks. This is a difficult task that will require collaborative action across business, government, and the broader community, as well as ongoing reform to telecommunications law and policy. This is also an inherently international issue, but international coordination is constrained because different countries have differing levels of commitment to human rights principles, and some have not ratified major treaties (including China, Russia, and the United States). For example, the geographic concentration of these corporations in the United States, which has not ratified key human rights treaties such as the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, is an undeniable barrier to using human rights tools to address GBV. Nonetheless, even in an era of institutionalized disregard for human rights, discussion of gender equality and the elimination of GBV online provides an opportunity to discuss normative values around GBV, including in developed countries. We hope that this discourse can increasingly be used to positively influence the ongoing practices of telecommunications companies and digital media platforms.
