Ahead of the DSA vote, online platform priorities continue to enable rampant abuse, sexism, and racism.

As European leaders shape the final provisions of the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA), it is essential that they pay attention to the particular ways in which Big Tech products harm the women and gender non-conforming people who use their platforms. Considering how Facebook began -- as a way for male Harvard students to rate and rank women on their “hotness” -- it’s perhaps not surprising that these platforms continue to perpetuate and enable misogyny. But it is absolutely unacceptable going forward.

Big Tech is an industry still largely dominated by men. While there have been efforts to increase diversity at tech companies in recent years, women remain massively underrepresented -- especially in leadership and tech roles -- making up just a quarter of the entire workforce. And though Big Tech companies have pledged time and time again that they will work harder to eradicate online misogyny and disinformation, we have yet to see any meaningful results. To the contrary, we have all too often been met with further studies and internal documents revealing just how bad these issues truly are. It’s plain to see that the parties who write the rules must change.

In honour of International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, this article surveys the wealth of existing research that demonstrates how women -- and especially women of colour and from LGBTQ communities -- face an increased risk of harm and abuse while they engage on online platforms. From vile hate speech and threats to rampant disinformation designed to exploit sexist and racist tropes, the facts are clear: Big Tech companies are incapable of regulating themselves. To avert further damage, decisive action must be taken by civic leaders to create an online world that is safe for all users. With a majority of young women and girls experiencing online abuse, and 87% reporting the problem is getting worse, there is simply no time to waste. European legislators must seize the golden opportunity now before them.

A troubling rise in online abuse, hate speech, and revenge porn

Academic and civil society research reveals that not only is online gendered abuse widespread -- it is on the rise. Globally, 38% of women have personally experienced online violence -- and 65% know women from within their networks who have experienced it.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, this type of abuse has increased even further. A study by UK charity Glitch into the impact that the UK’s national lockdown had on online abuse against women and non-binary individuals found that 46% of respondents experienced online abuse since the beginning of Covid-19, with 29% reporting it had gotten worse during the pandemic (for women of colour and non-binary people, this figure increased to 38%). A sharp increase in online violence against women coincided with the rise in people staying at home and spending more time online. With many workers transitioning to remote offices, online abuse alarmingly began to include the actions of colleagues (9%) as well.

For women in high profile positions, such as journalists, politicians and influencers, online abuse and threats are common. These threats make many women feel unsafe in offline spaces, too, forcing them to take additional measures to protect their safety. For some that means hiring private security or moving locations; for others it means removing themselves from online spaces and networks, censoring their actions and speech, or taking other similar precautions that unjustly inhibit their ability to express themselves.

A study by Amnesty International examining the Twitter presence of women journalists and politicians in the US and UK found that 7.1% of tweets they received were abusive or problematic. Black women in the study were 84% more likely to be the targets of online abuse than white women. The study estimated that “of the 14.5 million tweets mentioning the women, 1.1 million were abusive or problematic. That’s a problematic or abusive tweet every 30 seconds.”

Unlike the type of abuse men may receive online, the nature of gendered abuse means that the kinds of messages women receive are more violent, and often involve threats of sexual or other physical violence.

Women are also disproportionately at risk of image-based online abuse -- commonly known as revenge porn -- where private photos are leaked to online platforms or porn sites without their consent. There is little a person can do once their photo is circulating on these platforms -- while it can be reported, the onus lies with the platform to remove it, and police often have little powers or resources to properly follow this up. This reality can cause anxiety: a survey by HateAid found that 30% of women fear their photos will be stolen or leaked online.

Troublingly, there are platforms that are deliberately designed to facilitate using pictures of women for porn against their will, by creating easy to use interfaces where a woman’s picture or video can be uploaded in a couple of clicks. Some research estimates between 90% and 95% of all online deepfake videos are non-consensual porn, and around 90% of those feature women. The emotional impact this can have on survivors is immense.

Disinformation designed to perpetuate sexism

While the above examples of gender-based violence focus on instances where women receive comments or messages that are targeted at them, another form of gender-based violence online is gendered disinformation, i.e., abuse about women. These kinds of disinformation campaigns are designed to exploit existing gender narratives, language, and discrimination in order to “maintain the status quo of gender equality or creating a more polarised electorate”.

Gendered disinformation is often used to discredit female politicians running for office. For example, in the US, once Kamala Harris was named as President Biden’s running mate, false claims about her were being shared 3,000 times an hour on Twitter. These kinds of disinformation campaigns work to promote the narrative that women are not good political leaders and aim to undermine female candidates by spreading disinformation about their qualifications and experience, or implying they are “too emotional” for the task -- with the ultimate aim to keep women out of politics altogether and ultimately harm democratic processes.

Notably, these coordinated attacks on women are often orchestrated by far-right groups (like in the US context) or groups aligned with government authorities (such as in the Philippines). One of the impacts of these campaigns is that it shifts the narrative away from the political to the personal, meaning that women are forced to spend time refuting personal attacks and thus have less time to talk about substantive issues. This disinformation also creates barriers for other women wanting to get involved in politics, or dissuade them from even standing for office.

Platforms have also played a significant role in facilitating the spread of disinformation targeted at transgender people, including false claims and hateful rhetoric about bathrooms, gender dysphoria, puberty blockers, "detransitioning," and mental illness. The impact of these disinformation campaigns on the trans community in particular cannot be underestimated.

Young women and girls at particular risk of abuse and mental health damage

A 2020 survey by the World Wide Web foundation found that 52% of young women and girls have experienced online abuse, and 87% think the problem is getting worse. Of those that have experienced it, 51% said it affected their emotional wellbeing.

Even for those not directly under attack online, image-based platforms such as Instagram subject young women and girls to a constant stream of problematic content. Recent research by SumOfUs showed how quickly and far too easily users can find content promoting eating disorders or extreme dieting on Instagram -- despite the platform banning certain hashtags related to these topics. Those promoting their products know they can easily get around such restrictions by using alternative hashtags. Content promoting plastic surgery was also rampant, with promoters targeting young people and collaborating with influencers to convince girls and young women to spend money on altering their bodies.

Though Facebook, who owns Instagram, has long promised to curb this type of harmful content, we now know, thanks to Frances Haugen’s disclosures that the company has turned a blind eye to the toxic impact its platform has on young people, and particularly teenage girls. Facebook’s own research from 2019 confirms that “32% of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse.” While Facebook continues to downplay these negative impacts, their failure to take action to address this problem allows the company to continue to profit from the ad revenue related to this kind of harmful content.

Online harms can also affect young women in other ways. For example, what message does it send to them if they are seeing that the few women that are in the public eye are regularly targeted by vile and vicious digital violence? If Big Tech platforms aren’t properly regulated and forced to adequately tackle digital violence, this could lead to young women being deterred from taking up positions that would make them a target - thus limiting their career or education choices.

A strong Digital Services Act could help to tackle this

Women’s rights organisations have appealed to EU lawmakers to address these harms by supporting the key accountability tools on risk assessment, risk mitigation and mandatory audits in the European Commission’s proposal for the Digital Services Act.

They say: “Since some of this abusive behaviour is facilitated and indirectly encouraged by platforms’ design features, there needs to be a clear obligation imposed on very large platforms in particular to identify, prevent and mitigate the risk of gender-based violence taking place on and being amplified by their products. Through Article 26.1 of the DSA, platforms should be forced to take into account the ways in which design choices and operational approaches can influence and increase these risks, especially as defined in article 26.1.a-c.”

The DSA provides this unique opportunity to act on and to prevent further harms against women, and all users, of Big Tech platforms. EU leaders must embrace this opportunity and pass a strong DSA that puts people ahead of Big Tech profits. "The status quo is in no way supporting freedom of expression," says Lucina Di Meco, a co-founder of #ShePersisted Global. “It’s in reality supporting censorship of women online.”

Read more about the People’s Declaration and our movement’s demands to EU leaders.

The post Big Tech’s Assault on Women appeared first on People vs. Big Tech.

New research exposes the prevalence of Instagram posts promoting eating disorders, plastic surgery, and skin whitening products to young women.

With more than a billion people now using Instagram across the world, the Facebook-owned platform plays an outsized role in shaping visual norms and portraying aspirational goals for vast swathes of society today. Though this staggering degree of influence offers significant potential to enhance the public good, all too often it is used to maximise corporate profits at the expense of individual well-being and agency. Case in point: A research report commissioned by global activist group SumOfUs, which reveals the alarming degree to which content that promotes eating disorders, plastic surgery, and skin whitening products is made available on the platform to young women and teens.

Body image issues -- already highly prevalent amongst young people -- have been exacerbated by Covid-19. The number of patients ages 10 to 23 suffering from eating disorders has doubled since the start of the pandemic, and the National Eating Disorders Association in the US has seen a 40% increase in calls to its helpline since March 2020. With more time spent online, young people are increasingly susceptible to the persuasive suggestions of Instagram’s algorithms -- a manipulation machine designed to maximise engagement by amplifying content which is routinely harmful, untrue, or both. Such suggestions can be devastating on mental and physical health, with Instagram acknowledging having promoted weight loss content to people with eating disorders (unexpected triggers carry significant risk of relapse).

Aware of this highly serious issue, and unconvinced that Instagram and Facebook were taking sufficient steps to remedy it, the researchers examined 720 Instagram posts to better quantify the scale of the problem (240 posts each on eating disorders, plastic surgery, and skin whitening). Their research findings confirm that despite Facebook’s promises to curb such content, Instagram remains full of toxic posts that pose an immediate danger to the lives of those who use its services -- one heightened for teens and people of colour.

The report, Eating Disorders, Plastic Surgery, and Skin Whitening on Instagram: How young people are exposed to toxic content, highlights several key findings, including:

• 22 different hashtags were identified that promote eating disorders on Instagram, potentially leading to over 45 million eating disorder related posts.
• Of the 240 eating disorder posts analysed, 86.7% were pushing unapproved appetite suppressants, and 52.9% posts directly promoted eating disorders.
• 22 different hashtags were identified that promote plastic surgery on Instagram, potentially leading to over 22 million plastic surgery related posts.
• Of the 240 plastic surgery posts analysed, 86.7% were using posts to promote plastic surgery procedures or clinics.
• Of the 240 skin-whitening posts analysed, 81.3% promoted skin whitening products, of which 83.1% were unapproved products.

These findings dovetail with recent Wall Street Journal bombshell reporting on the significant negative impact of Instagram posts on teen girls. As revealed by the Journal, Facebook’s own internal research declared: “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls” and “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression.” Yet despite this and other critical information being made available to top executives, the company has continued to consistently target the most at-risk groups. Without regulatory intervention, Facebook simply has no financial incentive to remove the harmful content.

In response to its troubling findings, SumOfUs is calling for legislators to pass meaningful platform regulation and take action to ensure Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and other platforms give independent researchers access to the data they hold regarding the impact of their platforms on kids and teens.

Under the democratic banner of The People’s Declaration, the citizens of Europe have made it known that the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA) must value people over profits. Findings like those in the SumOfUs report underscore the urgent need to turn off the manipulation machine. The organisations of The People's Declaration, which represent over 25 million citizens across the European Union, are firm in their conviction: “It is time for these platforms to de-risk their design, detox their algorithms, give users real control over them and be held to account for failing to do so.”

Download Eating Disorders, Plastic Surgery, and Skin Whitening on Instagram: How young people are exposed to toxic content here.

The post Toxic Body Image Content for Teens on Instagram appeared first on People vs. Big Tech.

A new guide sent to all MEPs reveals what Big Tech lobbyists are saying about the DSA/DMA and why it’s wrong.

The digital industry’s top 10 spenders have officially passed the top 10 pharma, fossil fuels, and finance companies to become the biggest spenders lobbying EU institutions, indicates a report by LobbyControl and Corporate Europe Observatory, The Lobby Network: Big Tech’s Web of Influence in the EU. All told, 612 companies, groups, and business associations now spend over €97 million each year attempting to influence EU lawmakers. As the new king of the lobbying beat, the digital industry’s impact on European policy is wide and significant. And troublingly, it’s dominated by just a handful of elite companies.

One out of every three euro spent lobbying by the digital industry comes from its top 10 giants: Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Huawei, Amazon, Intel, QUALCOMM, IBM, and Vodafone (€32.8 total). Together, these massive financial outlays fund more than 140 Big Tech lobbyists in Brussels alone. And no companies -- across any sector in Europe -- spend more on lobbying today than Google, Facebook, or Microsoft.

Given this immense infrastructure around influence operations, it’s perhaps no surprise that a full 75% of high-level EU Commission meetings on the pending Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA) have taken place with digital industry lobbyists -- leaving non-governmental organisations, consumer groups, and trade unions to jockey for the remaining few slots. This lobbying campaign has since moved on to target national governments and Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) as well. Big Tech’s ability to purchase such privileged access defies democratic principles and threatens to drown out the voices of those advocating on behalf of the general public and the public good.

In response to these revelations, People vs Big Tech prepared a guide to help MEPs unpack Big Tech’s top five lobbying maneuvers. By exposing the favorite messages and messengers of the tech titans, it is our hope that MEPs, regulators, and members of the public will be better prepared to stand up and defend Europe’s democratic principles in the face of an overwhelming industry effort to steer DSA/DMA policy.

The guide, Inside Big Tech’s Lobbying Playbook: Know what they’re saying about the DSA/DMA and why it’s wrong, was sent to all MEPs on Wednesday, 22 September. It unmasks the five favorite narratives being pushed by the digital industry’s legions of lobbyists:

1. “This is really complicated. Let us help you avoid making a mistake.”

Big Tech stokes the fear of “unintended consequences” stemming from new legislation -- emphasizing lawmakers must tread lightly in regulating, or otherwise risk seeing their “well-meaning” rules wreak havoc on the future.

2. “Trust us, we’re the experts.”

In an attempt to dictate the new rules by which it must play, Big Tech pushes the idea that lawmakers are not well suited to legislate on technical matters and should therefore step aside to let the “true” experts work.

3. “We’re simply looking out for small businesses and consumers.”

Big Tech often styles their lobbying efforts as being made not on their own behalf, but rather in the interests of small and mid-size companies because doing so helps create cover for the industry’s real (i.e., self-interested) work in Brussels.

4. “You don’t want Europe to fall behind China, do you?”

Big Tech preys on geopolitical fears to convince EU lawmakers to cast aside the expressed interests of their constituents in order to win an innovation “arms race” with Chinese corporations.

5. “No need to take our word for it -- just look at what these think tanks say.”

Ties between many think tanks and their Big Tech funders routinely and intentionally remain undisclosed in an effort to portray think tank analyses as objective and independent when they are in fact anything but.

For MEPs, the choice is plain. Both the citizens of Europe and the experts at the Commission have repeatedly made it clear that the DSA/DMA must value people over profits. Big Tech’s continuous attempts to influence the legislative process and water down regulation run directly opposite to this intent. By inundating MEPs with one-sided technical jargon, industry lobbyists seek to stoke unsubstantiated fears of making a “mistake” by issuing enforceable rules. Yet the absence of such regulations is precisely what has led to the explosive growth of a corrosive surveillance commerce business model that thrives on hate and disinformation leading to a democratic decline. The time for legislative intervention has come.

Download Inside Big Tech’s Lobbying Playbook: Know what they’re saying about the DSA/DMA and why it’s wrong and an accompanying infographic below.

Inside Big Tech's Lobbying Playbook (pdf)

Infographic - How Big Tech Lobbies the EU (pdf)

The post Inside Big Tech’s Lobbying Playbook appeared first on People vs. Big Tech.

Recently deployed Twitter bot set to monitor Big Tech’s disproportionate access to EU legislators in the lead-up to the DSA/DMA votes.

Under the banner of People vs Big Tech, Global Witness -- an international NGO committed to protecting human rights and securing the future of our planet by challenging abuses of power -- has launched a new Twitter bot to monitor and publicize Big Tech’s disproportionate access to EU officials. Going forward, each time a senior EU Commission official is scheduled to meet with a Big Tech lobbyist, @EUTechWatch will automatically tweet about the meeting so that it is not allowed to slide under the radar. Global Witness will then also request information on what was discussed at the meeting via Freedom of Information Requests. The goal in shining a spotlight on Big Tech’s lobbying efforts in Brussels is to bring increased awareness and transparency to a policymaking process currently at risk of being overwhelmed by the money and influence of the digital industry.

In the lead-up to the critical votes on the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA), all eyes will be on these meetings. A recent report by LobbyControl and Corporate Europe Observatory, The Lobby Network: Big Tech’s Web of Influence in the EU, revealed a full 75% of high-level EU Commission meetings on the pending DSA and DMA have taken place with digital industry lobbyists -- leaving non-governmental organisations, consumer groups, and trade unions to jockey for the remaining few slots.

Additional analysis by Global Witness indicates that Big Tech lobbyists have held nearly 1,000 meetings with senior Commission officials since November 2014 (the date when officials began disclosing lobbying meetings). This is an average of more than 2.8 meetings per week. Even Covid-19 has had little effect on the frequency of these meetings. Since January 2020, Big Tech lobbyists have met with senior Commission officials almost 200 times. Big Tech’s ability to purchase such privileged access defies democratic principles and threatens to drown out the voices of those advocating on behalf of the general public and the public good.

That’s why it’s so important to follow and retweet @EUTechWatch to help ensure EU legislators prioritise people over profits on the upcoming DSA/DMA votes. Help spread the word by sharing this story or tweeting:

Today @Global_Witness together with #PeopleVsBigTech launches a new tool that tracks meetings between @EU_Commission officials & the #BigTech lobby. Follow @eutechwatch and show those trying to keep Big Tech powerful, that the world is watching.

Take a look below at some of the meetings @EUTechWatch has already highlighted. More details about the project are available from Global Witness here.

The post Automatic Eyes on Big Tech Lobby Meetings appeared first on People vs. Big Tech.