Evolving online harms and tech-enabled violence against women and girls (VAWG) have been highlighted by a UK National Police Chief’s Council (NPCC) report as a ‘high harm and high-volume threat area’. The report – published in July – identifies online and tech-enabled VAWG as one of five areas the NPCC will focus on in 2025. Criminal offences falling within the scope of ‘online and tech-enabled.
The latter two became offences on 31 January 2024, after being introduced into UK criminal law by the Online Safety Act 2023. This legislation named Ofcom as the independent regulator for online safety, bestowing a broad range of powers upon the regulator, including the ability to fine companies up to £18m, or ten per cent of their global turnover – whichever is greater – if they fail to comply with new requirements.
Other jurisdictions have also taken steps in recent years to address the growing problem of online and tech-enabled VAWG. In 2021, a series of reforms dubbed the ‘Olimpia Law’ were approved at the federal level in Mexico. The reforms were named after Olimpia Coral Melo, the activist and survivor of revenge pornography who pioneered the legislation. The reforms recognised digital violence and criminalised the non-consensual distribution of intimate sexual material.
Similar legislation is under discussion elsewhere in Latin America – in Bolivia, Chile and Ecuador – but it’s Argentina that has most recently followed suit, with its own Olimpia Act passing through the Argentine congress in October 2023. ‘It was enacted during the last government’, says Lisandro Frene, Chair of the Platforms, E-commerce & Social Media Subcommittee of the IBA Technology Law Committee and a partner at RCTZZ in Buenos Aires, ‘[when] the parliament was almost paralysed’. That the Act proceeded with strong support in such a fractious context is evidence of the urgent need for the legislation and of a shift in awareness of online VAWG, Frene says.
A separate piece of legislation, the Belén Bill, which seeks to criminalise the non-consensual production, distribution and possession of intimate images, has however stalled in Argentina’s Chamber of Deputies.
Unlike the UK’s Online Safety Act, Argentina’s Olimpia Act doesn’t place any legal responsibility for online safety upon businesses, nor does the country have any specific regulation related to social media networks or internet service providers. Meanwhile, neither Frene nor Bethular predict the imminent enactment of further regulation in Argentina to address the issue of online VAWG. Indeed, in July, President Javier Milei established a Ministry of Deregulation and State Transformation, which is intended to deregulate the economy and implement state reform. ‘That gives you an idea about the intentions of the government’, says Frene.
Ultimately, regulation and criminalisation, though helpful in combatting VAWG, can only go so far. Education and cultural change are needed to address the attitudes that underpin gender-based violence. Social media platforms are not only spaces in which digital forms of violence are enacted but also, increasingly, they’re arenas for the propagation of misogynistic ideologies that embolden perpetrators of physical VAWG.
Yvette Cooper, the UK’s Home Secretary, appears to agree. In August she announced a rapid review to inform a new government counter-extremism strategy – with misogyny one of the ‘extremist ideologies’ being mapped and monitored. ‘For too long, governments have failed to address the rise in extremism, both online and on our streets, and we’ve seen the number of young people radicalised online grow’, said Cooper.
‘Questioning sources of information, looking for bias, thinking about counterarguments – [young people are] not taught those skills’, says Nicholson. This leaves them vulnerable to the influence of misogynistic content – which, according to a University College London study – is specifically pushed towards this demographic by targeted algorithms. Thus, exposure to toxic material is almost inevitable, a byproduct of being present on the internet. In this context, children and young people need to be taught how to tackle the material head-on.
But, Nicholson says, individual influencers espousing misogynistic content online are a symptom of the problem, not the cause. ‘The problem is: why is there a demand for this kind of content? What gap is this filling in young boys’ lives?’ he says. As technology continues to develop at dazzling speed, new forms of VAWG emerge and ideological threats fester.
What’s clear is that all jurisdictions need a multifaceted approach to online and tech-enabled VAWG that addresses online spaces both as sites of violence and as forums for the proliferation of hatred.
