Facebook is finally attempting to automate a system for taking down and guarding against the sharing of nude images or videos without users’ consent, a crime that’s disturbing in its regularity.
Savannah Cunningham, 19, was one of the hundreds of women whose body was put on display without consent in a secret Facebook group and then consumed for perverse, degrading entertainment by members of the United States Marine Corps and other branches of the military. Now, according to The New York Times, she is…
In this week’s New Yorker, Margaret Talbot profiles Carrie Goldberg, a thirty-nine-year-old attorney in Brooklyn focusing on sexual privacy and online harassment. “The internet,” in Goldberg’s view, has “given rise to something new in the history of revenge.”
On Saturday, the Cincinnati Zoo shot and killed a 17-year-old gorilla named Harambe to protect a four-year-old boy who’d fallen into the animal’s enclosure. Now, people who evidently would have preferred to see a toddler die in Harambe’s place are angrily threatening the boy’s mother on Facebook. Except, displaying…
Sarah Spain and Julie DiCaro are both women who make their living as sportswriters. For that, of course, they must be punished, which is why hordes of Twitter douches regularly deluge them with vile harassment and threats. In a new video, Spain and DiCaro had normal, non-sociopathic men read some of those tweets…
On Monday, the Guardian launched a new series focused on internet abuse and harassment called “The Web We Want,” by turning inward.
Sadly, it looks like the theme of today is men harassing women online. First, Ashanti was forced to appear in court in front of her stalker, who not only sent the pop star “disgusting, derogatory, disrespectful things” on Twitter, but had already “gone to jail for doing the same thing” to her before more than once.…
Today in tragic non-surprises: an Australian study finds that online harassment of women has very nearly become the “established norm.” Women under 30 are especially susceptible.
A British Columbia man named Patrick Fox has created a website whose sole intent, he says, is harassing and defaming his ex-wife, posting photos of her and her home and alleging that she’s a stripper and a white supremacist. He told a news outlet he’ll only stop when she’s either dead or “destitute and homeless.”…
Congresswoman Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, who’s called for better enforcement of laws against online harassment, says someone called police Sunday night to falsely report an active shooter at her home. Clark told the Boston Globe that officers descended on her front lawn, some armed with long guns.
Emily Sears—a banging model with an hourglass bod and a large Instagram following—is no stranger to unwanted dick pics. Luckily, she’s come up with an extremely rewarding way to deal with them—by sending screengrabs to the senders’ wives, girlfriends, sisters, and moms.
Hollaback, the anti-harassment organization who gained attention for their 2014 controversial catcalling video, is now focusing their efforts on online abuse with the recently-launched HeartMob. The project, which was funded through Kickstarter last year, consists of a private platform that will help people who…
Last week, South by Southwest abruptly cancelled two panels planned for March: one discussing how to counter online harassment, and another about “ethics in journalism” stocked with Gamergate supporters. Today, one of the organizers of the online harassment panel says SXSW ignored her security suggestions, right up…
When Buzzfeed writer Grace Spelman was a 14-year-old Harry Potter fan, she added Ben Schoen, a host of a Harry Potter-themed podcast called Mugglecast, on Facebook. Though they had never spoken to each other during the nine years of being Facebook friends, Schoen first reached out to Spelman almost two weeks ago with…
Yesterday on Last Week Tonight, John Oliver devoted 16 full minutes to the topics of vicious, misogynist online harassment and revenge porn, the difficulties of stamping them out, and the absolutely unacceptable responses from authorities. The whole thing culminates in a parody of an early 90s AOL ad. It was pretty…
JK Rowling has always been outspoken about her politics on Twitter. The Harry Potter author is a vocal supporter of Britain’s Labour Party, and she donated nearly a million pounds to the “No Campaign,” which fought to keep Scotland from becoming an independent nation.
From the start of Lauren Mayberry’s band Chvrches, the Scottish vocalist has been open and condemning about the harassment she’s encountered. In 2013, she wrote an essay for The Guardian whose headline and thesis was “I will not accept online misogyny”; she detailed the rape threats she receives on a regular basis as…
Congresswoman Katherine Clark of Massachusetts is not particularly happy about how the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice have responded—or not—to online threats against women, particularly the ones we've been seeing this year from the very devoted fans of Gamergate. Today, she launched a…
Game developer and frequent Gamergate target Brianna Wu says she fears for her safety due to a bizarre and threatening YouTube video posted by a Massachusetts man this weekend. The man has posted several videos accusing Wu of trying to assassinate him; the newest video shows him standing next to his wrecked car, which…
I. "Hey Anna, do you like pizza?" I was just sitting down to dinner one evening this past November when I looked through some new Twitter notifications on my phone. My night, I realized regretfully, was about to get very, very stupid.
