Social network giants pledge to tackle abuse of women online – By Alex Hern (The Guardian) / July 1 2021
Facebook, Google, Twitter and TikTok commit to overhaul their platform’s moderation systems
Four of the world’s largest social networks have committed to overhauling their moderation systems to tackle the abuse of women on their platforms.
Facebook, Google, Twitter and TikTok have signed up to the pledge, led by the World Wide Web Foundation (WWWF), to fix persistent weaknesses in how they tackle online gender-based violence.
The announcement comes in the middle of a global forum for gender equality convened by UN Women in Paris. It is supported by an open letter signed by former heads of state and global leaders such as Michelle Bachelet and Graça Machel, and celebrities including Annie Lennox, Ashley Judd, Gemma Chan and Maisie Williams, which calls on the companies to fully implement the commitments.
More than a third of women worldwide have experienced abuse online, rising to almost half for younger women, according to a 2021 study from the Economist Intelligence Unit. The four tech companies have pledged to tackle that abuse by focusing on two major areas of concern across their platforms: women’s inability to control who can reply, comment on and engage with their posts; and the lack of clear and reliable reporting systems for flagging online abuse.
