Ofcom, the media and online regulator, has proposed new concrete measures that tech firms should take to tackle online harms against women and girls, setting out a new and ambitious standard for their online safety.

With insights from victims, survivors, women’s advocacy groups and safety experts the draft guidance sets out practical, ambitious but achievable measures that providers can implement to improve women’s and girls’ safety.

The guidance has four central issues of focus, including online misogyny, pile ones and online harassment, online domestic abuse, and intimate image abuse.

The research from Ofcom also revealed the stark scale of online harms against women and girls in the UK, a problem that may only grow without intervention.

Women are five more times likely to be victims of intimate image abuse than men, and 2023 saw a rise in deepfake image abuse, with more posts online than all previous years combined.

Almost a quarter (23%) of teenage girls regularly see content that objectifies or demeans women online, with nearly 70% of boys aged 11 to 14 exposed to online content that promotes misogyny and other harmful views, leading to a new generation of children and teens developing the same toxic mindset around gender.

The online world also contributes to real danger, with online domestic abuse going under reported, and nearly three in four (73%) of women journalists experiencing online threats and abuse.

Calling On Big Tech 

Ofcom is calling on big tech organisations to promote safety-by design in their platforms, with key examples of good industry practice.

The regulator identified nine such actions to take to better protect the safety of women and girls online:

• Abusability testing – this identifies how a service or feature could be exploited by a malicious user
• Technology to prevent intimate image abuse, such as identifying and removing non-consensual images based on databases
• User prompts asking them to reconsider before posting harmful material – including detected misogyny, nudity or content depicting illegal gendered abuse and violence
• Easier account controls, such as bundling default settings to make it easier for women experiencing pile-ons to protect their accounts
• Visibility settings, allowing users to delete or change the visibility of their content, including material they uploaded in the past
• Strengthening account security, for example using more authentication steps, making it harder for perpetrators to monitor accounts without the owner’s consent
• Removing geolocation by default, because this information leaking can lead to serious harms, stalking, or threats to life
• Training moderation teams to deal with online domestic abuse
• Reporting tools that are accessible and support users who experience harm
• User surveys to better understand people’s preferences and experiences of risk, and how best to support them
• More transparency, including publishing information about the prevalence of different forms of harms, user reporting and outcomes

Ofcom is now inviting feedback on its draft guidance, as well as any further evidence on any additional measures that could be included to address harms that disproportionately affect women and girls.

Recommended reading

• Creating Deepfakes To be Criminalised in UK
• Ofcom Introduces Over 40 New Online Safety Measures
• Children First See Violent Online Content at Primary School Age

“No woman should have to think twice before expressing herself online, worry about an abuser tracking her location, or face the trauma of a deepfake intimate image of herself being shared without her consent,” Dame Melanie Dawes, Ofcom chief executive, said.

“Yet these are some of the very real online risks that women and girls face today – and many tech companies are failing to act.

“Our practical guidance is a call to action for online services – setting a new and ambitious standard for women and girls’ online safety. There’s not only a moral imperative for tech firms to protect the interests of female users, but it also makes sound commercial sense – fostering greater trust and engagement with a significant proportion of their customer base.”