Slut-Shaming Online: Revenge Porn and Identity

Today, networked publics make it easier than ever to enforce social norms through shaming. Although Western society has adopted a more accepting view of women’s sexuality over the last four decades, slut-shaming continues to be an issue. The practice of slut-shaming demeans women and highlights the sexual double-standard that men can engage freely in sexual behaviour but that women may not. Cheap, anonymous, and instant access to the Internet – an environment where there are no boundaries to posts that can become instantaneously available around the world – has amplified the effects of shaming. Such is the case with non-consensual pornography, on offence primarily directed against women. The purpose of this paper is to explore how digital culture can end up reinforcing existing gender-based social relations, inequalities, and forms of power in our society. By using the example of revenge porn, this paper argues that digital technologies assist aggressors in perpetuating rape culture and violence against women by making it more difficult for women to control their identity online. This paper discusses the following sub-issues: 1) the construction of identity online, 2) the effects of algorithmic processes on the ability of individuals to control their own identity, and 3) Facebook’s recently introduced tool to combat revenge porn.

The pervasiveness of revenge porn on the internet indicates that digital technology has deepened existing social norms regarding women’s sexuality. The wrongful appropriation of sexualized images that belong to someone else is colloquially referred to as “revenge porn” or “non-consensual porn” (Mathen, 2014). It is a form of slut-shaming which harms women’s self-perceptions, encourages gender inequality, and perpetuates rape culture (Poole, 2013). In fact, some scholars in the legal sphere consider it a form of sexual assault (Langlois & Slane, 2017). Slut-shaming has been around far longer than the Internet, but the Internet has given shamers the ability to publicize their shaming in a manner that was not previously possible (Poole, 2013). The internet’s iterative nature, its capacity for endless permeation and its resistance to control, produce a powerful tool for revenge (Mathen, 2014). The degree to which social norms and interactions in developed nations are shaped by online communication cannot be overstated (Mathen, 2014). With networked communication processes, shaming tactics become ways of exerting social power through sexual and informational violence (Langlois & Slane, 2017). While there is nothing inherently wrong with taking and sharing intimate photos with partners, in revenge porn, the woman faces the consequences for her sexuality rather than the man for posting the images without her consent. In this way, digital networks parallel, foster, and perpetuate the rape culture of the offline world.

The rise of revenge porn demonstrates how the exploitation of digital technologies can contribute to a loss of control over how we construct our identities online. A successful revenge porn campaign depends on two critical pieces of information: intimate pictures and the identity of the victim (Langlois & Slane, 2017). In the past, shaming took real effort and put the shamer at risk as well (Klonick, 2016). In today’s networked world, however, shamers can attack females in a global forum that can be seen by anyone who has access to a computer, all without revealing their own identity (Poole, 2013). By providing the victim’s real identity, the anonymous poster ensures the victim is a target of comments by other users of the site, of ongoing surveillance, and direct, often threatening, contact from strangers both on and offline (Langlois & Slane, 2017). Naming the victim also increases the likelihood that other people in the victim’s offline life such as her current partner, family, and coworkers will be exposed to these intimate images (Langlois & Slane, 2017). Non-consensual pornography radiates outward in concentric circles: photos may easily be viewed by family, classmates, friends, co-workers, neighbours, and the world at large (Mathen, 2014). It shares with all forms of Internet communication an unpredictable, virtually limitless reach and its impact on affected individuals is profound with shame, guilt, and embarrassment being typical reactions (Mathen, 2014). The Internet never forgets and its ubiquity and easy accessibility can render the punishment for a norm violation outsized and uncalibrated from the underlying offense (Klonick, 2016). Because the Internet has both eroded women’s power to construct and control their identities and given shamers a world-wide and largely unregulated platform, it can be said to support and deepen the existing misogynistic systems in our society.

Social media amplifies the most popular user-generated content which further undermines the efforts of revenge porn victims to regain control of their identity and reinforces existing social controls on women. According to Danah Boyd (2014), people are often motivated to spread embarrassing content because others find it interesting, and social media provides a platform for that content to spread far and wide. While people choose what to spread online, the technologies they employ are created to increase the visibility of content that will garner the most attention (Boyd, 2014). Many social media tools are designed to encourage people to consume streams or feeds of updates because otherwise the steady flow of comments, photos, and updates can become overwhelming (Boyd, 2014). Facebook addresses this issue algorithmically by limiting what users see in their newsfeed so that the most interesting content appears at the top (Boyd, 2014). Inevitably, the content that appears is that which has already received a lot of attention via views, comments, and likes (Boyd, 2014). Technical features that show “trending” content amplify what is already gaining traction (Boyd, 2014). Together, these mechanisms create a near-perfect vehicle for the spread of revenge porn. Further, Poole (2013), notes that there are few restrictions in place to prevent people from uploading and sharing photos and comments containing an individual’s name or image. While users can ask Facebook to remove undesirable or abusive content, the site’s user policy gives it considerable discretion in deciding whether or not it will remove the offending material (Poole, 2013). As social media is designed to give the loudest voice to content that is already generating interest, shamers can easily exploit the medium to spread revenge porn, which, ultimately perpetuates rape culture.

Similarly, Google’s popularity-based search processes promote revenge porn to the top of search results resulting in more stigma, shame, and loss of control over reputation and identity for revenge porn victims. Online identities are not built solely through personal updates on social networks but are also produced and managed through data collection and circulation via networks and algorithms (Langlois & Slane, 2017). The first, and therefore most critical, set of available information that defines our identity to others, are the profiles generated by Google search engine results (Langlois & Slane, 2017). Google is the largest and most influential search engine, and, therefore, it is also the central information broker in terms of the reputational economies of revenge porn (Langlois & Slane, 2017). Moreover, many other smaller information brokers mine Google for personal information that they can profit from through algorithmic processes (Langlois & Slane, 2017). A vast majority of people use Google for searching the web, making Google’s search results vitally important in the construction of online identity. When those results algorithmically spread revenge porn, they reinforce society’s existing systems of misogyny.

Facebook’s new revenge porn tool purports to help victims regain control of their identity but is, in fact, another example of how digital technologies support existing gender-based inequalities and power structures. Announced in November 2017, the tool is being piloted in Australia and ostensibly allows victims of revenge porn to take action before their photos are posted to Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger (Solon, 2017). Many offenders utilize Facebook because it allows them to maximize harm by broadcasting non-consensual porn to people who are closest to the victim (Solon, 2017). Individuals who are concerned that sensitive images may be distributed without their consent can send the photos to Facebook through Messenger to be “hashed,” that is, converted into a unique digital fingerprint that would then be used to identify and block attempts to re-upload the same image (Solon, 2017). While Facebook’s understanding that revenge porn must be addressed is laudable, there are several ways in which the new tool is problematic.

First, as Poole (2013) notes, in terms of sexual expression, females are denied the freedoms enjoyed by males. It is the norm rather than the exception that females are shamed for acting on their sexual desires and despite heteronormative sexual acts taking both a male and a female, it is the woman who faces society’s judgment when her behaviour is made public (Poole, 2013). In asking women to self-report sensitive images, Facebook perpetuates this norm by putting the onus on women to prevent issues of sexual harassment and assault rather than placing consequences on men for their actions. Second, the process itself is onerous and time-consuming during a particularly stressful time for the victim. The pilot requires users to first complete an online form on the Australian e-safety commissioner’s website detailing their concerns (Solon, 2017). Users are then asked to send the pictures to themselves on Messenger while the e-safety commissioner’s office advises Facebook of the submission and, finally, when Facebook receives that notification, a community operations analyst accesses the image and hashes it (Solon, 2017). Third, Facebook intends to store the images briefly before deleting them to ensure its policy is being enforced correctly (Solon, 2017) and multiple people at both the Australian government and Facebook have input into the process, including an actual human (or humans) who will review the images before they are hashed. All of this increases the risk that the images could be saved, hacked, and disseminated during a process that is supposed to help victims. If Facebook were truly concerned with helping women, it would remove all of the extraneous people from the process and create a tool that empowers women to hash their own images, providing only the hashes, not the sensitive images themselves, to Facebook.

Despite a shift towards a greater acceptance of women’s sexuality in our society, slut-shaming remains a significant problem that is enabled and amplified by digital technologies, particularly the algorithmic processes of social media and Google. Revenge porn makes use of these technologies to demean women and enforce existing social norms by shaming victims online. Indeed, even tools that seek to address the issue of revenge porn, in fact, reinforce gender-based social relations, inequalities, and forms of power in our society. Until posters of revenge porn face real consequences for their actions, and those who build and maintain the web’s social and organizational networks make real efforts to dismantle the systems of misogyny that their technology enables, the Internet will continue to be a darker and more sinister place for women than any dark street or alley IRL.

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Mathen, C. (2014). Crowdsourcing Sexual Objectification. Laws, 3(3), 529-552. doi:10.3390/laws3030529

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Solon, O. (2017, November 07). Facebook asks users for nude photos in project to combat revenge porn. Retrieved November 30, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/07/facebook-revenge-porn-nude-photos