Broken promises – how Big Tech betrayed women

For all the opportunities presented by the internet, the reality is the major platforms do little to tackle misogyny, grooming and revenge porn while allowing its algorithms to leave female gig economy workers poorer and its moderators exposed to triggering levels of online hate, argues Dr Lilia Giugni, author of The Threat

Women are let down on almost every metric by the Big Tech companies who dominate the internet, argues Dr Lilia Giugni. Picture: Getty Images

Big Tech platforms are not as universally popular as they once were. Revelations of whistle-blowers and scandals à la Cambridge Analytica have made presidents and prime ministers less keen to be photographed beside the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos. Companies such as Google, Meta or Amazon are plagued by lawsuits from users and former employees, or have recently come under criticism for announcing mass-layoffs. But whilst even the most inattentive of observers can notice the cracks within the techno-utopia originating from the Silicon Valley, its shortcomings appear even more evident when we consider them from an oft-neglected perspective: that of the women whom platform capitalism has first deceived and then failed worldwide.

To fully appreciate this tale of broken promises, we must go back to no longer than a few years ago, when the advent of a new generation of internet platforms was still largely celebrated as a major catalyst for gender equality. Big Tech’s cutting-edge devices were expected to provide women with tools to self-organise, gain economic empowerment and access flexible work they would be able to combine with family obligations. And nobody can deny that there was some truth in such predictions. Social media and video-sharing sites, for example, did indeed contribute to a new wave of feminist activism, whilst novel jobs and income sources became available to women after apps like Uber or Airbnb were launched on the market. Except this is only a small part of the story.

First to come to light among the darker sides of the platform economy was gender-based cyber violence – a plight that affects one European woman out of ten from age 15 – and that is considered a conservative estimate. People of all genders, of course, can become the target of online hate speech and other abusive internet behaviour. Women, however, are especially likely to be victimised across several platforms, as well as to alter their online and offline habits as a result. Not to mention that some forms of digital attacks, from sexual grooming to non-consensual pornography, are visibly gendered in their nature. It is, in fact, overwhelmingly women and girls who are approached on social networks to be lured into sexual exploitation, or who appear in explicit pictures and videos circulated without their permission.

For their part, the market-leading corporations which facilitate this epidemic of internet violence have always proclaimed their innocence. They maintain that their technologies are nothing but mirrors of the worst instincts already lurking in the underbelly of society. And yet even this apparently sound justification has long ceased to stand up to the actual facts. We are, by now, only too familiar with the expedients that data-harvesting platforms use to keep us all glued to our screens to produce more money-making data. In particular, we are aware that the business strategies of many social media include promoting the circulation of “divisive”, attention-grabbing messages, and showing us contents similar to those that triggered our interest in the past. And as denounced, among others, by tech industry whistle-blowers, this design is one of the main causes behind the proliferation of misogynistic online hate.Nor are mainstream sites such as Facebook or Instagram the only tech firms bearing responsibility for gendered abuse. Deserving of a special mention are also porn-sharing platforms like Pornhub, all endowed with algorithmic techniques as sophisticated as those deployed by Big Tech businesses, and all allowing consumers to both watch and upload a mind-blowing variety of amateur videos. Among other things, this means that on such “YouTubes of porn” intimate images posted without women’s consent tend to get lost and become nearly impossible to retrieve. And it confirms that there is a long list of economic actors profiting from women’s suffering.

On the other hand, cyber-attacks against female internet users are just one among many causes of gender-specific disillusionment with the platform model. Much less talked about and yet painfully real are the predicaments of the women on the other side of the screen – those who work at various levels within the platform economy.Within this hugely heterogenous yet invariably vulnerable workforce, there are several particularly misunderstood or unacknowledged categories. One is that of social media moderators – the digital labourers whose job is to clean up big platforms from the worst that is shared on them, and who by dint of being exposed daily to such triggering materials are known to develop conditions like anxiety, depression, and PTSD. And precisely because, as we saw, a large portion of the unlawful content that travels across the web entails some form of gender-based violence, it is perhaps unsurprising that female professionals tend to feel intensely affected and have so far been at the forefront of their colleagues’ fight for better working conditions.And even beyond female moderators, the list of at-risk groups is seemingly endless. There is the army of aspiring social media “influencers” and other digital content creators, the vast majority of whom are women, and often work for next to nothing or even for free hoping to “make a name for themselves”. There are the riders, cleaners, carers and the other “gig” workers who offer their services through an ever-rising number of apps and sites and face gender-based hurdles regardless of the sector. Some of them, like drivers and riders, are a minority within the male-dominated staff and are often penalised by platforms’ algorithms for not accepting night-time jobs out of fear of harassment. Others, such as “gig” beauticians or housecleaners, were initially attracted to the dream of “flexible jobs” and now find themselves earning extremely little while being deprived of maternity coverage and other long-fought-for benefits. And finally, at even lower levels of the tech industry hierarchy, we find the factory workers who physically assemble our gadgets and the miners who extract the minerals without which no platform could ever work. Many of whom are women and are confronted with even harder challenges than their male counterparts, including, according to consistent reports from human rights organisations, regular molestation and sexual harassment in the workplace.So here we have it. While indisputably promoting the creation of life-enhancing technologies, platform capitalism has so far failed millions of women. And since these are times where the regulation of platforms’ functioning is finally considered a political priority across the Channel as well as the Atlantic, this means we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity. Female voices could in fact positively contribute to make long-awaited reforms such as the UK’s Online Safety Bill and the EU’s Digital Services and Digital Market Acts more effective and complete.Women’s rights concerns could be usefully integrated into decision-making and policy changes surrounding technological developments, with a view to designing safer, more democratic and egalitarian devices and production processes. Yet failing to listen to these voices and those preoccupations might have heavy costs for generations to come.

​Dr Lilia Giugni is a researcher, writer, and feminist activist. She is a Lecturer in Social Innovation and Strategy at the University of Bristol Business School, and a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Social Innovation. The Threat – Why Digital Capitalism is Sexist (and How to Resist) (September Publishing, £16.99) is her first book.