- Hundreds of posts on Telegram and other apps show non-consensual content being shared and even sold, while advocates and survivors say too little is being done to stop it
- As similar groups proliferate in countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, and South Korea, some women – and a few men – have decided to take action
This is the second in a series of stories on image-based abuse supported by the Judith Neilson Institute’s Asian Stories project, in collaboration with The Korea Times, Indonesia’s Tempo magazine, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, and Manila-based ABS-CBN. Sonia Sarkar, Tashny Sukumaran and Lee Min-young contributed reporting. The piece contains descriptions of a sexual nature. This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing.
Amala*, 22, from Malaysia, recalls the day it felt like her mobile phone would never stop lighting up with Instagram follow requests from men.
“My stomach instantly dropped when I realised what was going on,” she said. A male friend later told her that her Instagram posts and username had been shared with some 40,000 members of the Telegram channel V2K.
“I felt nauseated and pretty much clueless, like every other person who has been in this situation,” Amala said.
V2K – which was last year denounced by women on social media, who also reported it to the Malaysian authorities – is one of hundreds of groups that have sprung up on chat apps such as Telegram.
The encrypted messaging platform, which has half a billion users, gained popularity amid a drive to protect user data from governments – but it has also come under increasing scrutiny for being used to share illegal and abusive content.
