Join our consultation workshops on survivor-centred design, policy and research to tackle tech-facilitated gender-based violence
Help us imagine a trauma-informed alternative to the status quo
“Amala*, 22, from Malaysia, recalls the day it felt like her mobile phone would never stop lighting up with Instagram follow requests from men.
“My stomach instantly dropped when I realised what was going on, ” she said. A male friend later told her that her Instagram posts and username had been shared with some 40,000 members of the Telegram channel V2K.
“I felt nauseated and pretty much clueless, like every other person who has been in this situation, ” Amala said…
On “Vitamin4Testicles” — a channel in which more than 19,000 members shared over 15,000 photos and 6,000 videos, mostly of women from Malaysia — there were frequent requests for leaks about specific women. Some also openly offered and sold images of their ex-girlfriends.
“If your friend’s photo is in [the] group then it’s already with many people, ” a user wrote on May 13. “Something [that] is online is always online. You are here to watch nudes, just accept it.”
Telegram seems to be actively preventing users from accessing some of these groups, but only through iPhones. For instance, when we tried to join “Sg Nasi Lemak Official”, a Singapore-based channel created on November 26, a warning appeared on an iPhone: “This channel can’t be displayed because it was used to spread pornographic content.”
But the group, which has more than 5,000 subscribers, was still accessible on Android devices — which have Google-developed operating systems — and Telegram’s Mac application.” — RAQUEL CARVALHO, Asean Plus News
This fantastic and grim piece of reporting highlights the rampant tech-facilitated abuse happening on the web, how it’s impacting survivors and the difficulties of taking down these networks. Tech-facilitated gender-based violence (TGBV) is any form of gender-based violence or abuse that happens through or is enabled by technology. It includes doxxing, cyber harassment and image-based abuse, and can often be part of a larger pattern of abuse that also involves offline harassment or abuse.
In the face of unrelentless trauma and imperfect systems set to prevent and tackle it, we’re embarking on a cosmic journey to imagine an alternative systems approach to this issue.
And, you’re invited! We’re strapping into our spaceships and taking off to Orbit the realms of tech, policy and research to identify the factors that cause, enable and can mitigate tech-enabled gender-based violence. Ultimately, at the end of this exploration, we will create a global field guide for survivor-centric interventions to TGBV.
We are holding a series of consultation workshops for people committed to end tech abuse working across tech, policy, research and civil society. In this exploration, we’re going to take a fourth-dimensional look at the intersections of identity, class, gender, land, culture, profession and other markers used to marginalize communities.
Looking back
Before we show you the map for our exploration, let us look around us — on Earth. Here’s what we have done so far in 2021.
We interviewed global experts.
We interviewed experts on TGBV from around the world and learned a lot. For example, Nighat Dad, founder of the Digital Rights Foundation in Pakistan, taught us this about reporting harassment on social media platforms: “The community guidelines and the remedies that are available on these platforms are not really accessible to users. I think the language barrier is there, but at the same time finding the right remedy. There is no mass awareness raising among users who are being violated on the platform. They have no idea what remedies they can use: how to report, how to appeal, most of the time people don’t even go there because it’s not available in their regional language.”
We documented our own learnings and practices.
We documented our own practices at Chayn and End Cyber Abuse — producing version one of design and research principles and a policy framework for trauma-informed, intersectional interventions.
We asked you.
We ran workshops at MozFest and RightsCon to crowdsource feedback and ideas for the guide.
The Quest Map
We’re now holding consultation workshops to explore and refine our findings, deepen our analysis, and shape the final version of the field guide because this resource needs to be applicable to all of our work. We want to document all of our collective worries, observations and ideas.
In July, we’ll host three interactive, participatory online workshops which will delve deeper into what survivor-led and intersectional interventions look like across research, tech and policy. The workshops will be an opportunity to share your views and experience on TGBV, connect with others in the field and contribute towards the Orbits Field Guide. In August, we’ll host a final consultation workshop with survivors to test and refine the outputs from the other workshops. The full workshop schedule is below.
“How might we create research environments that aren’t extractive?…”
Research workshop — for researchers working on TGBV — 6 July, 5–7pm BST/12–2pm EDT/9.30–11.30pm IST
“How might we design technology that doesn’t allow or enable gender-based violence?…”
Technology — for tech platforms, and activists, civil society groups and researchers campaigning tech platforms on TGBV — 21 July, 1–3pm BST/8–10am EDT/5.30–7.30pm IST
“How might we create policies and legal interventions that don’t re-traumatise survivors?…”
Policy — for policy makers, lawyers and civil society groups and researchers campaigning policy makers on TGBV — 28 July, 1–3pm BST/8–10am EDT/5.30–7.30pm IST
“How might we create trauma-informed technology, research and policy to tackle gender-based violence?
Workshop for survivors — for survivors of TGBV — 4 August, 1–3pm BST/8–10am EDT/5.30–7.30pm IST
Want to join the exploration? Sign up here.
If you’ve got an idea you want to discuss in detail with us about this project or share a resource you like or have created, please email Chayn’s Movement Builder Naomi, sharing a little bit of information about you, your work and how it relates to TGBV.
As a diverse partnership, It’s important to us that we compensate voices that are under-represented. Thanks to Robert Bosch Stiftung, we have a limited amount of participation compensation bursaries (€100) available for participants who are unsalaried and/or based in the Global South (or Majority World) — please mention if you’d like to access this when signing up for a ticket (note: as we have a limited amount of bursary places available we cannot guarantee bursaries. We will contact you after signing up to confirm whether we have a bursary space available for you. All participants of the survivor workshop will receive compensation (but have the option of donating it back to Orbits if they prefer).
If you are not able to attend the workshops but would like to contribute, email Naomi and we’ll share the workshop notes for comment after the workshop.
