'How social media turned my campaigns upside down'
Hamisa Zaja, a Mombasa-based politician who is a survivor of technology-facilitated gender-based violence.
What you need to know:
- Multinational social media platforms have partly been blamed for the continued prevalence of the emerging trend.
- According to a two-year study by #She persisted, a women’s rights organisation, loose regulations by multinational social media firms amplify tech-facilitated GBV.
Hamisa Zaja, a Mombasa-based politician, knows all too well the toll that technology-facilitated gender-based violence (GBV) can take on a woman.
On one fateful morning before going out to campaign, she woke up to her nude photos circulating on popular social media platform Facebook. Of course, Ms Zaja, who was contesting the Mombasa woman representative seat in last year’s election, had never taken or posted intimate photos of herself on any platform. But on that particular day, her nude photos were trending on Facebook.
“My Facebook page was hacked and someone had posted pictures with images of my face on nude bodies. At the same time, the hackers were blackmailing me for Sh550,000 for me to regain control of my account. I was so devastated,” she recounted in an interview with Nation.Africa.
Being a woman living with a physical disability, she has had her fair share of violence meted out to her even when she was vying in 2017. However, this time round, it was far worse because she could not even ‘see’ or identify her attackers.
“I also got direct messages fetishising my disability and asking me for sexual favours. I tried reporting the matter to Facebook to regain my account, but whenever the company sent me a code to re-access my account, the hackers would intercept it.”
Ms Zaja is just one of thousands of survivors of online gender-based violence. According to a global UN Women study,38 per cent of women have experiences of online violence, while 85 per cent of women, who are online, have witnessed online violence being perpetrated against other women.
Multinational social media platforms have partly been blamed for the continued prevalence of the emerging trend. According to a two-year study by #She persisted, a women’s rights organisation, loose regulations by multinational social media companies amplify technology-facilitated GBV.
The study, titled Monetised Misogyny, found that offline GBV has moved to online spaces where women in public spaces such as politicians, human rights activists and journalists face heavy gender trolling. Although the research lauded the power of digital platforms in amplifyingmovements such as the #MeToo movement in the United States, #EnaZeda (metoo in Arabic) in Tunisia and #primeiroassedio (first harassment in Portuguese) in Brazil, it also calls out social media platforms for profiting off hatred towards women on their platforms.
“Like a modern-day Trojan horse, what seemed like a gift promising lasting peace to the world is turning into a weapon for destruction. The way the major digital platforms are designed is largely responsible for the current hellscape experienced by women online. Harmful narratives are boosted and amplified through algorithms that make such content sticky and often viral,” reads the report.
According to lead gender expert of the research, Lucina Di Meco, the current “notice and take down models” of content moderation and automation that social media platforms use to address online GBV are inadequate.
“The two largest social media companies have been recently decreasing the amount of attention and resources dedicated to ensuring their platforms’ safety. After Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in 2022, much of the company’s Trust and Safety team has ‘dwindled’, while Facebook has reportedly shifted most of its focus and resources, towards the creation of the Metaverse,” reads the ‘Monetised Misogyny' report.
Safety
In an equality café hosted by UN Women in a Nairobi hotel, Sunita Caminha, the regional policy specialist in ending violence against women at UN Women, advised that social media companies prioritise women’s safety.
“We would like to see technology being driven by promoting gender equality as opposed to profits. Technology companies should also transform social norms such as trolling, extortion and other forms of violence in the digital world that violate women’s rights. The companies should be better at monitoring violations and also hold perpetrators to account.”
The problem is compounded by the multinational nature of social media companies and lack of awareness of what to do when a person is being trolled online.
For Ms Zaja, she reported the harassment to local police, but because she could not identify the hackers; it was hard for her to get any justice. She eventually had to revamp her Facebook account, which was a major election campaign platform for her, by using her business e-mail instead of her personal one.
When asked how global social media platforms can be held accountable and prevent technology-facilitated GBV, Ms Caminha opines that United Nations member states like Kenya and social media companies need to convene and draw solutions that address the worrying trend of online gender based violence.
Although Ms Zaja regained her Facebook account, she says the experience left her emotionally scarred because she felt so vulnerable and defenseless against her ‘invisible’ attackers.
