I have guest post on The F Word today, previewing my talk for next week’s Virtual Gender conference.
As digital rights activists we need to recognise here what we already know as feminists: that campaigns of misogynist online abuse are a free speech issue in and of themselves. It doesn’t matter if it’s the state doing the censoring, or Facebook, or a bunch of trolls who make us feel unsafe about speaking out – the effect is the same. As feminists we need to acknowledge what we already know as digital rights activists: that automated censorship is open to abuse and tends to create more problems than it solves. We need to use this knowledge to find subtler solutions which address the real issues rather than damage our own campaigning infrastructure.
Read more over on The F Word.