Our ability to communicate with people around the world online can be a powerful force for good. But it also creates new ways for people, and the state, to inflict violence and harm on people on a whole new scale.  

New forms of violence are evolving out of our growing reliance and use of online and digital communications. 85% of women who spend time online have witnessed online violence. 38% of women have been the target of online violence.  

People spread hate, fear, and misinformation on social media in ways we’ve never seen before since they are rarely held accountable for their actions. People are also targeted with tactics like digital blackmail and spyware. These attacks are detrimental to people’s everyday life. They seriously affect our health, and our ability to freely express ourselves or engage in activism.   

Online violence is a threat to our human rights. It can infringe on our right to privacy, our right to not be discriminated against and our right to be free from violence. It also presents an alarming threat to our right to freely express ourselves and engage in peaceful protest.   

What is online violence? 

Often when we think about violence, we think of physical aggression or violence that happens when people are face-to-face. But violence can also happen online. This kind of behaviour, like cyberbullying and online harassment, can be just as real and dangerous as violence that occurs in person.   

Online violence can be perpetrated by both state and non-state actors. There are countless documented cases of government authorities employing online violence to silence dissent or spy on activists and journalists.  

Technology-facilitated gender-based violence

Just like the offline world, power dynamics impact how people engage with each other online. Some people online use the internet to spread hate, misogyny, homophobia, biphobia and transphobia.

The term ‘technology-facilitated gender-based violence’ (TfGBV) is used to describe acts that use technology to cause harm to women, girls and LGBTI people. It’s defined as any act of violence, or threats thereof, perpetrated by one or more individuals that: 

• Is committed, assisted, aggravated and/or amplified in part or fully by the use of information and communication technologies or digital media; 
• Disproportionately impacts women and girls but can also impact other people based on their real and/or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression; and  
• Causes physical, psychological, economic, and sexual and reproductive harm.    

Examples of TfGBV which rely on technology but do not necessarily happen online can include spyware, non-consensual video and image recording or sharing through Bluetooth and non-internet-based devices. 

Technology reproducing gender inequality 

These forms of violence exist on a continuum of gender-based violence that is perpetrated against women, girls and LGBTI people, and is rooted in and reproduces gender inequality, power asymmetry and harmful gender norms and stereotypes.    

While technology-facilitated gender-based violence impacts all women, girls and LGBTI people, those facing intersectional forms of discrimination and systemic marginalisation, including on the basis of race, disability, religion, caste, ethnicity, age, class, rural and urban setting, among others, may face both unique and compounded forms of technology-facilitated online gender-based violence.  

In 2018, we found that women of colour, (Black, Asian, Latinx and mixed-race women) were 34% more likely to be mentioned in abusive or or repeated content that was hurtful or hostile than white women. Black women were disproportionately targeted, being 84% more likely than white women to be mentioned in abusive or repeated hurtful or hostile tweets.    

All forms of gender-based violence, whether online or offline, are human rights abuses and are regarded as such under international law. 

Some common forms of technology-facilitated gender-based violence include: 

• Doxing: Doxing involves revealing personal information or identifying documents or details online about someone without their consent, typically with malicious intent. This can include a person’s home address, real name, children’s names, phone numbers or email address. 
• Threats of violence: Direct and indirect threats of violence, such as physical or sexual threats, which can sometimes quickly spill over into the offline world. 
• Video and image-based abuse: Using images or videos to threaten and harass, including sharing of non-consensual intimate images, taking non-consensual intimate images and videos of a person, deepfakes or morphed images that depict survivors in a sexually explicit manner or sending unsolicited sexual images or messages to another person. 
• Online harassment or cyberbullying:  Using online platforms to intimidate, threaten, cause distress, silence and target women, girls and LGBTI people using abusive comments or images over a short or coordinated period of time. 
• Hateful and abusive speech: Using intentionally derogatory and offensive language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of their identity, including their gender and/or sexual orientation, which dehumanizes and encourages violence against women, girls and LGBTI people. 
• Outing: Disclosure of a person’s sexual orientation and/or gender identity without their consent and in violation of their right to privacy. 
• Digital blackmail: Stealing someone’s digital information and using it to coerce a person for various things, including money, intimate images and photos or to perform sexual acts. 
• Targeted surveillance: Surveillance that targets a specific person or an organization, such as using spyware, to access and monitor their activities and private data. Women, girls and LGBTI activists often pay a higher price when their privacy is breached because of, for example, the different ways their private data could be weaponised against them. 

These are only some forms of technology-facilitated gender-based violence since it can be defined in different ways and because technology and user behaviours are constantly evolving. 

The dangers of technology-facilitated gender-based violence

When women, girls and LGBTI people are targeted with technology-facilitated gender-based violence, it is more dangerous for them to engage and participate in online conversations and benefit from digital technologies.   

It can also lead to severe psychological harms that impact their mental health. This includes conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder, paranoia, depression, and anxiety, which can lead to self-harm. For instance, a higher proportion of transgender and gender-diverse people reported that being targeted online very negatively impacted their desire to live.   

The intensely pervasive and consuming nature of gender-based violence online leads many people, including human rights defenders, to isolate themselves from online communities altogether. This makes online violence not only an issue of discrimination but also something that infringes on people’s freedom of expression and their political participation.

Being a target of technology-facilitated gender-based violence can also result in economic harms as women, girls and LGBTI people are forced to minimize their digital footprint. It also affects their access to a range of information and services and can lead to attacks and instances of violation and abuse in the offline world as well.  

Digital technology is really important for activism, but at the moment, it’s not a safe space for LGBTI persons and women at all

Nitchakarn Wongwiset, Non-binary human rights defender and activist 

Silencing dissent with online violence 

We all have the right to freedom of expression, online and offline.

Online spaces like social media can breathe life and power into activism and social justice. Social media democratises the way we share and find information and amplifies voices that might otherwise be ignored. It also creates online spaces for protest where people can connect and assemble as a digital collective, bringing people together in ways that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.   

But technology-facilitated gender-based violence poses a serious threat to expression and activism by women, girls and LGBTI people.  

It can feel impossible to continue to push for change when you are the victim of smear campaign or if you discover that your government is using spyware to monitor your activities or you are repeatedly facing gender-based harassment online.  

The chilling effect

These experiences force women, girls and LGBTI activists and human rights defenders to leave or reduce their engagement in online spaces. And in a society where a lot of public discourse and communication happens online, when you decide to limit your online engagement, you also limit your activism and your access to information.  

Often, this silencing effect is intentional, particularly when states or governments are the perpetrators. They deploy tactics with the specific intent of scaring people into silence. Our interviews with human rights defenders who have experienced online violence mirrors what many experts call ‘the chilling effect’.

What is Amnesty doing to stop online and other technology-facilitated violence?

We are actively campaigning for an end to technology-facilitated gender-based violence, including online violence, everywhere. Our researchers speak to people around the world so that our campaigns and recommendations are rooted in real experiences.  

As a global movement, we organise campaigns that teach people about the human rights implications of technology-facilitated gender-based violence. This includes lobbying governments and technology companies to take more clear and direct action to protect people’s rights online, especially women, LGBTI people and activists. We support civil society with building and protecting their digital resilience too.

Through our new global Make It Safe Online campaign, we are calling on governments around the world to take action and protect the right to protest for women, girls and LGBTI people.  

We wholeheartedly believe in a future where online spaces can be a true force for good, where people can feel safe to freely participate and express themselves without fear of violence.

But we need your help to make that vision a reality.