(Montreal) YWCA Canada has launched a series of free digital tools to combat online hate. Called “Block Hate,” the YWCA campaign comes after the organization completed a study on online harassment.
Funded by Public Safety Canada’s Community Resilience Fund, the study is based on interviews with young people aged 16 to 30. The data collected indicates that among women and people of diverse gender identities, more than a quarter have been victims of hateful content online. One in two people studied have witnessed it.
Youth with disabilities, LGBTQIA+, or First Nations were 60% more likely to be targeted. Black and racialized communities were 53% more likely than average. Of the youth targeted by hate, 60% were targeted repeatedly, often daily.
While these events are common, it’s only a small portion that is usually reported. “It’s really when we went looking for this data that we realized there was a real problem, that people need to know what to do in these situations,” says Aline Nizigama, executive director of YWCA Canada.
Block hate
A series of videos has been posted on the organization’s website and social media to explain to young people how to react to these situations, whether they are victims or witnesses. Obviously, it suggests blocking and reporting harassers, but also taking screenshots to keep a record of the aggression.
In more serious cases, these can be useful in order to form a legal case. For younger people, it is recommended to call an adult for help. Another important thing can be to disengage. Mme Nizigama explains that “you have to know that it’s OK” not to always respond to insults.
Account security is also an important part of digital protection. It is advisable to choose strong passwords and change them if security is compromised as well as to enable multi-factor authentication.
The campaign also focuses on not sharing too much information on social networks, including location information. To ensure that you don’t reveal too much, you have to “periodically review your privacy settings and features; they’re constantly changing,” explains the director of YWCA Canada.
“We really try to hold the platforms accountable, to have multiple ways for people to protect themselves, but by default these platforms make our information public or share information without us knowing,” she warns.
As a witness, the organization insists on being proactive. To do this, it encourages distracting the individual, but “with caution, because attention can quickly turn back to you.” It is also suggested to document everything, to denounce behaviors, to shift your responses rather than being impulsive and to delegate rather than taking everything upon yourself.
Increase since the pandemic
“What our statistics show us is that violence has increased with the lockdown and the COVID phenomenon,” notes Mme Nizigama, both online and offline.
Online, however, she finds herself “sometimes even in an amplified way,” she explains. She names among other things the notion of anonymity as a source of the problem: “I can create a fake account or give myself another name and start harassing someone without it really coming back to me.”
Mme Nizigama also notes that the use of social networks and chat sites has increased in recent years. The director of YWCA Canada insists on the responsibility of the platforms regarding the harassment found there.
While some platforms like X seem to do little to protect their users, Mme Nizigama welcomes the openness of Facebook and Instagram, which collaborated with the study. She maintains, however, that a lot of harassment still happens on META platforms and that the situation could be better.
“It is possible to continue to create and demand spaces that respect us online,” she concludes. “These are spaces where we live, we communicate, we work, we consume our information, these are really spaces that are necessary.”