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The nonconsensual taking or sharing of nude or sexual images, also known as “image-based sexual abuse,” is a major social and legal problem in the digital age. In this chapter, we examine the problem of image-based sexual abuse in the context of digital platform governance. Specifically, we focus on two key governance issues: first, the governance of platforms, including the regulatory frameworks that apply to technology companies; and second, the governance by platforms, focusing on their policies, tools, and practices for responding to image-based sexual abuse. After analyzing the policies and practices of a range of digital platforms, we identify four overarching shortcomings: (1) inconsistent, reductionist, and ambiguous language; (2) a stark gap between the policy and practice of content regulation, including transparency deficits; (3) imperfect technology for detecting abuse; and (4) the responsibilization of users to report and prevent abuse. Drawing on a model of corporate social responsibility (CSR), we argue that until platforms better address these problems, they risk failing victim-survivors of image-based sexual abuse and are implicated in the perpetration of such abuse. We conclude by calling for reasonable and proportionate state-based regulation that can help to better align governance by platforms with CSR-initiatives.

This chapter examines the phenomenon of doxxing: the practice of publishing private, proprietary, or personally identifying information on the internet, usually with malicious intent. Undertaking a scoping review of research into doxxing, we develop a typology of this form of technology-facilitated violence (TFV) that expands understandings of doxxing, its forms and its harms, beyond a taciturn discussion of privacy and harassment online. Building on David M. Douglas's typology of doxxing, our typology considers two key dimensions of doxxing: the form of loss experienced by the victim and the perpetrator's motivation(s) for undertaking this form of TFV. Through examining the extant literature on doxxing, we identify seven mutually non-exclusive motivations for this form of TFV: extortion, silencing, retribution, controlling, reputation-building, unintentional, and doxxing in the public interest. We conclude by identifying future areas for interdisciplinary research into doxxing that brings criminology into conversation with the insights of media-focused disciplines.

When discussing the term “technology-facilitated violence” (TFV) it is often asked: “Is it actually violence?” While international human rights standards, such as the United Nations' Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (United Nations General Assembly, 1979), have long recognized emotional and psychological abuse as forms of violence, including many forms of technology-facilitated abuse (United Nations, 2018), law makers and the general public continue to grapple with the question of whether certain harmful technology-facilitated behaviors are actually forms of violence. This chapter explores this question in two parts. First, it reviews three theoretical concepts of violence and examines how these concepts apply to technology-facilitated behaviors. In doing so, this chapter aims to demonstrate how some harmful technology-facilitated behaviors fit under the greater conceptual umbrella of violence. Second, it examines two recent cases, one from the British Columbia Court of Appeal (BCCA) in Canada and a Romanian case from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), that received attention for their legal determinations on whether to define harmful technology-facilitated behaviors as forms of violence or not. This chapter concludes with observations on why we should conceptualize certain technology-facilitated behaviors as forms of violence.

Mobile dating apps are widely used in the queer community. Whether for sexual exploration or dating, mobile and geosocial dating apps facilitate connection. But they also bring attendant privacy risks. This chapter is based on original research about the ways gay and bisexual men navigate their privacy on geosocial dating apps geared toward the LGBTQI community. It argues that, contrary to the conventional wisdom that people who share semi-nude or nude photos do not care about their privacy, gay and bisexual users of geosocial dating apps care very much about their privacy and engage in complex, overlapping privacy navigation techniques when sharing photos. They share semi-nude and nude photos for a variety of reasons, but generally do so only after building organic trust with another person. Because trust can easily break down without supportive institutions, this chapter argues that law and design must help individuals protect their privacy on geosocial dating apps.

While digital technologies have led to many important social and cultural advances worldwide, they also facilitate the perpetration of violence, abuse and harassment, known as technology-facilitated violence and abuse (TFVA). TFVA includes a spectrum of behaviors perpetrated online, offline, and through a range of technologies, including artificial intelligence, livestreaming, GPS tracking, and social media. This chapter provides an overview of TFVA, including a brief snapshot of existing quantitative and qualitative research relating to various forms of TFVA. It then discusses the aims and contributions of this book as a whole, before outlining five overarching themes arising from the contributions. The chapter concludes by mapping out the structure of the book.

On 20 March 2020, the four adult convicts of the 2012 Delhi rape case were executed after a long debate regarding the punishment for their crime. The Delhi rape case, unlike others, was also given to the fast track court because of the worldwide outrage India received in its aftermath. Otherwise, most rape survivors rarely speak out and if they do, their lives are often endangered and threatened, depending on the severity of the case itself and the perpetrator's rank in the society. Through the analysis of Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury's, 2016 film Pink, and Ajay Bahl's film Section 375 (2019), this chapter explores the different ways in which mainstream Hindi cinema deals with such questions, especially in its depictions of courts. Both these films foreground India's contemporary cultural systems of fear that silence the rape survivors. They also imply that in the court cases, unless the specific court case faces intense global publicity, as was the case of the Delhi gang rape, rape survivors will never want to speak out. Moreover, the rape survivors will also hesitate to file a First Information Report (FIR) – a document that records crimes by the police against their perpetrators – limiting any possibility for justice for them. The laws surrounding rape cases are obscure and complex and finding justice for a rape victim (unless it is on a global level) is not an easy venture in India. At the time of the #metoo movement, the rape laws in India are not designed in such a way to arguably encourage victim-survivors to speak up. Instead, if rape survivors do decide to confront their perpetrators, they not only face ostracisation from society but also the danger of losing loved ones and endanger their lives as well.