‘Epidemic of misogyny’: Why Hong Kong, Singapore and the rest of Asia should be concerned about Big Tech failing women

A new study says Meta-owned Instagram neglected to act on 90 per cent of misogynistic abuse, which included sexual, violent, and hate messages

Social media and chat apps need to change the way they operate, while abuse against women is becoming ‘normalised’, Hong Kong and Singapore specialists say

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Specialists and support workers say social media and chatting apps “systematically” fail women subjected to online sexual violence. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 9:00am, 24 Apr 2022Updated: 5:31pm, 17 Apr 2023

Sharan Dhaliwal, the founder of South Asian culture magazine Burnt Roti, says she has received hundreds of “d**k pics” over the years via Instagram, the social media platform on which she has more than 10,000 followers.

The high-profile writer blocks these users – who send unsolicited images of male genitalia – but the abuse continues.

“It’s a power play … it’s about them feeling they have power and can walk away from that saying: ‘I did that’,” Dhaliwal said.

She was responding to a recent report about gender-based violence and misogynistic abuse on Instagram, which is owned by Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook Inc).

Specialists and support workers in Asia and Europe say social media and chatting apps are “systematically” failing women, as image-based abuse – when someone shares, or threatens to share, intimate images without the consent of those featured in it – and other forms of online sexual violence increased during the coronavirus pandemic.

Their comments come after a recent report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a US-headquartered non-profit organisation that focuses on disrupting online hate and misinformation, showed that Instagram didn’t act on 90 per cent of abuse sent via direct messages, also known as DMs. CCDH said the findings represented “an epidemic of misogynist abuse taking place in women’s DMs”.