On 25 November, the first day of the UN’s 16 Days of Activism and two years on from the Online Safety Act (OSA) being passed, Ofcom published its long-awaited guidance, A Safer Life Online for Women and Girls.
For Refuge, this marks a welcome development in a long-running campaign to ensure the online safety regime delivers meaningful protections for women and girls. When the existing legislation was first introduced to Parliament, it did not mention women and girls once. Refuge, as part of a coalition of academics and organisations from the violence against women and girls (VAWG) and children’s sector, called for it to be amended to introduce a VAWG code of Practice.
With the support of dedicated parliamentarians, our campaign resulted in the legislation being amended to require Ofcom to publish guidance for tech companies on addressing harms that disproportionately affect women and girls. It is this guidance that has now been published.
With tech abuse at unprecedented levels, it could not come at a more critical time. Last month, Refuge released data showing a 62% year-on-year rise in referrals to its dedicated Technology-Facilitated Abuse and Economic Empowerment Team, and we have been clear that tackling and preventing online VAWG and tech-facilitated abuse must be a core pillar of the Government’s upcoming VAWG strategy.
From meeting with Ofcom officials during the consultation phase around the draft guidance, to facilitating focus groups with survivors, Refuge is proud to have helped shape this landmark guidance by amplifying the voices of the survivors it must protect.
What does the guidance do?
The guidance sets out nine actions that online services – including social media platforms, dating apps, gaming services, search engines, and some pornography sites – can take to improve women and girls’ safety online.
These are a mix of ‘foundational steps’ that Ofcom expects tech companies to take in order to comply with their duties under the OSA and ‘good practice steps’, which are recommended measures that companies can adopt to go further in protecting women and girls. The guidance is centred on content and activity that Ofcom has categorised into four key ‘online gender-based harms’.
What are the key harms?
- Misogynistic abuse and sexual violence: Illegal content and content harmful to children that encourages misogyny and normalises sexual violence, often promoted through algorithms targeting young men and boys.
- Pile-ons and coordinated harassment: Groups of perpetrators coordinating to abuse specific women or groups of women, including threats, intimate image abuse, as well as abusive, hateful and violent content that is harmful to children.
- Stalking and coercive control: Criminal offences that use technology to perpetrate stalking or coercive and controlling behaviour in the context of intimate or familial relationships.
- Image-based sexual abuse: Criminal offences including intimate image abuse (such as sharing, or threatening to share, intimate images without consent) and cyberflashing (sending explicit images to someone without their consent).
What should companies be doing?
To address these harms, Ofcom has recommended that tech companies adopt a ‘safety-by –design’ approach to their services, improve transparency around online gender-based harms, and respond effectively and proactively when these harms occur.
This includes adopting a range of recommended measures, such as:
- Engaging with survivors as part of the risk assessment process for online gender-based harms.
- Sharing evidence on emerging trends and risks with civil society and law enforcement.
- Conducting abusability testing and using personas to understand how different users may experience a feature or product, enabling intersectional responses to abuse.
- ‘Bundling’ privacy settings to make it easier for survivors to keep their online profiles completely private and safe from abusers.
- Using hash matching technology to prevent the circulation of content produced in the context of intimate image abuse and removing links to sites hosting non-consensual images and ‘nudification’ apps.
- Reducing the prominence of misogynistic abuse and sexual violence in search results and introducing deliberate friction – such as using prompts and nudges to deter users from sharing this material.
- Imposing ‘rate limits’, including limiting how many comments or posts a user can make within a specific period, to prevent pile-ons.
- Providing tools for users to block and mute multiple accounts simultaneously and filter out content from unverified users.
- Enabling user reporting through safety features such as ‘quick exit’ buttons and the ability to report multiple interactions and posts at once.
Jasminder, one of the survivors who took part in our focus groups, says she welcomes the new measures. “For survivors, it is significant to see guidance that pushes tech companies to strengthen their reporting systems and introduce meaningful safeguards, such as making it easier to set accounts to private and apply enhanced visibility restrictions.”
She went on to explain just how overdue this change feels. “It has been clear for far too long that the safety of women and girls is not a priority for most tech companies. Taking part in Ofcom focus groups with fellow survivors and Refuge’s Survivor Engagement Team was a much-needed opportunity for survivor voices to shape the guidance and ensure it sets out the practical steps that these companies can take to prevent the harms we face online.”
What’s changed?
Some adjustment to the definitions of online gender-based harms have been made since the draft version of the guidance. Notably, Ofcom has also included a focus on how the recommended measures may benefit men and boys, both as victims and perpetrators of online gender-based harms. Ofcom explains the rationale for these changes in its statement accompanying the guidance. It is important that any shift in the scope of the guidance does not divert from its core objective of tackling harms and abuse that disproportionately impact women and girls.
Following consultation, Ofcom has changed one of the four harm categories from ‘online domestic abuse’ to ‘stalking and coercive control’. While we welcome the inclusion of stalking, during the consultation process Refuge had called for stalking to be introduced as an additional standalone harm.
Additionally, while ‘coercive control’ aligns more closely with the priority offence contained in the OSA, Refuge is concerned that this terminology is not well understood, and that retaining ‘online domestic abuse’ as its own category of harm would have sent a clearer message to tech companies about their responsibilities to understand, prevent, and respond to the spectrum of harms that are perpetrated online in domestic abuse contexts. This must remain central to their efforts during implementation.
‘Safety by design’ to protect children online and tackle VAWG is a strategic priority for government with regards to online safety. Ofcom’s recognition of the need for a ‘safety-by-design’ approach to VAWG is crucial, but the absence of a clear definition within the guidance risks leaving too much room for interpretation and too much power in the hands of tech platforms.
New good practice measures such as content nudges and mass-blocking functions are a welcome step in this direction. However, much of the guidance focuses on responding to harms once they have already occurred, rather than preventing them in the first place.
Is it enforceable?
The guidance is voluntary, meaning that its effectiveness will rely on the extent to which tech companies choose to put it into practice.
Sadly, we are all too aware that tech companies’ imperative to make profits often takes priority over protecting women and girls. Refuge will continue to call on government to upgrade the guidance to a legally enforceable Code.
This would give Ofcom powers to take enforcement action against non-compliant tech companies, including issuing financial penalties – ensuring that companies are properly held to account if they fail to take the safety of women and girls seriously.
What next?
In 2027, Ofcom will publish a follow-up report looking at how tech companies are engaging with the guidance. In the meantime, we hope to see rigorous monitoring of implementation and continued engagement with survivors and the VAWG sector to develop meaningful metrics that demonstrate whether companies are truly meeting their responsibilities to women and girls, and whether and how survivors’ experiences online are changing.
Refuge will continue to influence both government and the regulator, sharing real-time insights from survivors to help ensure the online safety regime is as strong and survivor-centred as it needs to be.
Technology moves quickly – and abusive behaviours emerge just as fast. That is why it is essential for Ofcom to follow through on its commitment to update the guidance as new forms of online gender-based harm emerge and as laws and policies evolve.
At Refuge, we will keep fighting until every survivor can go online with confidence, not fear – free from abuse, intimidation, and the threat of harm.
Refuge’s National Domestic Abuse Helpline is available on 0808 2000 247 for free, confidential support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. A live chat service is also available from 10am to 10pm, Monday to Friday, and from 10am to 6pm on weekends. For further information and advice, visit www.nationaldahelpline.org.uk. For support with tech-facilitated abuse, visit www.refugetechsafety.org.
