PRIVACY

Fighting Against Revenge Porn

An Italian case study of online content moderation, regulations and women’s rights.

By Sonia Sangiovanni

June 6, 2021

The conversation over online content moderation often focuses on issues like freedom of expression and misinformation. Yet, another type of harmful content that deserves attention from regulators and platforms worldwide is "Revenge porn". This growing phenomenon exploits the internet's lack of moderation to produce harm and perpetuate a culture rooted in misogyny and slut-shaming. This article will look at the Italian case to present the difficulties of fighting against this crime.

What is revenge porn? And why is it a pressing issue in Italy?

The term "revenge porn" is an informal expression used by the media to describe the act of sharing intimate and sexual content of someone without their consent. This offence often takes form in posting photos, videos or deepfakes of someone to harm them. The offender could be anyone who got access (whether directly or through hacking) to the victim's material. However, the vindictive nature of the term stems from the fact that most perpetrators are ex-partners, trying to shame and digitally abuse their victims. As María Rún Bjarnadóttir explains in her article "Does the Internet Limit Human Rights Protection? The Case of Revenge Porn", this type of phenomenon is unfortunately not new, as there have been instances of non-consensual pornography shared before. Yet, as the author further argues, "although the internet did not alter the concept, it has affected the amount".

While victims of revenge porn could be anyone, it's important to point out that it is a highly gendered crime. In the study "Dismantling 'You Get What You Deserve': Towards a Feminist Sociology of Revenge Porn", Emilee Eikren and Mary Ingram-Waters explain that revenge porn should not be seen "as isolated, individual acts against a woman", but rather as part of "a broader culture of violence against women" and as a reflection of "cultures of hegemonic masculinity on the internet and social media". This type of crime targets women as a way "to prevent them from enjoying full access to the opportunities, increasingly linked to their online reputations, necessary to live productive lives". 

By looking at data on the Italian context, it is clear that revenge porn is both widespread and gendered. According to a recent study, 13% of Italians knew a victim of revenge porn directly. Moreover, among the victims of abuse in Italy, 83.19% of the victims of non-consensual pornography were women. The press has also covered in-depth the growth of this phenomenon across the country. In 2020, Wired Italia investigated revenge porn groups chats of 40.000 members on Telegram, sharing imagery and contact information of women and minors. According to a police report released in November 2020, almost two episodes of revenge porn are reported each day. 

The Italian legislation against revenge porn: the first step to serve justice and protect victims

While the spread of revenge porn has increased during the past year, the Italian government already adopted a law against it, officially labelling it as an offence. The 2019 regulation against non-consensual pornography pushes for two types of actions. First, it triggers the so-called "code red", which expedites the procedures to protect the victims, remove the harmful content and serve justice. Secondly, it calls for fines and imprisonment of "anyone who sends, delivers, gives, publishes or disseminates images or videos of sexual organs or sexually explicit content, intended to remain private, without the consent of the persons represented." Depending on the circumstances, incarceration can range from one to six years and fines between 5,000 to 15,000 euros. 

This regulation is an essential first step in the fight against revenge porn. However, the Italian approval of this law remains a rare case in Europe. As Politico reported, the European Union has not yet passed a law that directly tackles the crime of revenge porn. In other countries like Germany, France and the UK, governments have already implemented measures and legislation to fight against this crime. Yet, the legal fragmentation across Europe can lead to further roadblocks in removing harmful content due to cyberspace's transnational nature. 

The challenges of enforcing online content moderation: should we trust online platforms?

The adoption of laws against revenge porn is necessary to tackle the problem and denounce the perpetrators. However, the enforcement of such regulations and the removal of harmful content online is unfortunately not as straightforward as it should be. The limitations in dealing with this issue are inherently linked to the dynamics of the internet. The lack of clear jurisdictional borders, the ambiguity of platform liability, and users' anonymity allow offenders to spread harmful material at a large scale and across multiple communication channels.

As Bjarnadóttir explains, governments, despite being responsible for protecting human rights both online and offline, cannot interfere directly with the moderation of content on online platforms. This lack of room for action is mainly due to the lack of platform liability and users' right to freedom of expression. Yet, in the case of revenge porn, the harm created by the content excludes it from falling under the category of free speech, as "the rights of others (the person depicted) weighs heavily against the disseminator's freedom of expression". Due to this loophole, democratic governments have limited power in moderating online content, leaving most of the responsibility to online platforms, which work as "de-facto" regulators of the internet. 

Private companies set and enforce digital rights through their guidelines, allowing users to report and automatically remove non-consensual pornographic content. The website of C.A. Goldberg, a victims' rights law firm, summarized how victims could ask to remove revenge porn content on multiple mainstream websites and platforms, ranging from TikTok to Pornhub. By looking at it, it's possible to notice that social networks generally provide directions to protect oneself. However, these procedures are far from being harmonized across platforms.

Much of content moderation on online platforms depends on their willingness and scale to remove harmful content. For example, while Google deletes image and site results linked to revenge porn, another website might refuse to do so without the right incentives. To some extent, this was the case for Pornhub. Only after a New York Times article revealed the vast presence of non-consensual and child pornography, the video-sharing platform finally decided to remove large quantities of unverified content. 

In Italy, the major roadblock in the fight against revenge porn has been Telegram's policy. The terms and conditions of the app only punish illegal pornography posting in public groups. For this reason, many of the chats discovered by the Wired Italia investigation and the police often link to other private groups, where the content can't be moderated. Law enforcement agencies can nonetheless infiltrate such groups to try to identify the perpetrators. This type of operations, however, takes way more time without platform cooperation. 

How can we go forward in the fight against revenge porn?

As the director of the Postal Police, Alessandra Belardini, explained in an interview, the best way to tackle revenge porn is before it is shared online.

The recent cooperation between the Italian Privacy supervisor and Facebook goes in this direction. By contacting the Privacy supervisor, users can preemptively block their intimate content on Facebook and Instagram from being shared. Through an "emergency" channel of communication, the Privacy Supervisor shares it with Facebook, which encrypts the imagery with a secure hash code and blocks any publication attempt.

This technological solution allows victims to regain control over their images. However, preventing revenge porn from happening requires more than that. Regulators need to fight against gender inequality and discrimination online and offline. This is also the case for Italy, where women are the primary victims of revenge porn and other domestic crimes. To better protect its citizens, the Italian government should quickly adopt the bill against misogyny, trans-homophobia and ableism, which has been stalling since 2018. By approving this law, revenge porn will finally be recognized not only as a crime but as one against all women. 

Sonia Sangiovanni is a young professional working at the intersection between Technology and Public Affairs. She holds a master’s degree in International Security from Sciences Po, and her Master Thesis on the privatisation of the Intelligence Services in the UK covered the Cambridge Analytica scandals. Throughout her career, Sonia has worked as a consultant for Public Administrations and the European Commission.