Four major social media companies yesterday pledged to make efforts to improve the safety of women on their platforms. Facebook, Google, TikTok, and Twitter all signed the pledge in response to the recommendations of a working group of 120 experts organized by the Web Foundation.
“For too long, women have been routinely harassed, attacked, and subsequently silenced in online spaces. This is a huge threat to progress on gender equality,” said Web Foundation Senior Policy Manager Azmina Dhrodia in a statement. Abuse against women online has reached epidemic proportions, with 38 percent of women reporting personal experience with online violence, according to an Economist Intelligence Unit report.
The pledges represent a step in the right direction, but it's unclear if they’ll do much to address online abuse. “I’m really grateful to Web Foundation for work that they’ve done, genuinely, to get platforms to make some efforts in this regard because there’s been very little movement over time,” Sarah Sobieraj, a professor at Tufts University and faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, told Ars.
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