Gendered violence in the digital age and the regulation of Online Platforms

With the emergence of the World Wide Web, gender violence has reached new and unexpected intensity, also due to the peculiarities of its instruments. The Web has turned the diffusion of images and words from a (quantitatively) limited and circumscribed phenomenon (both in time and space), into a widely diffused, global and permanent trend. The most relevant online platforms have quickly become vehicles of violent conducts against women, usually guaranteeing anonymity and the use of false identities. These platforms play a crucial role in the struggle against harassments, non-consensual intimate image diffusion (revenge porn) and gendered hate speech online. Many countries have adopted specific provisions to identify the perpetrators of these crimes, but legal regulation can only respond slowly to the fast developments of technology. Most recently, several scholars have proposed newly tailored legislative measures to overcome gender violence. Among these proposals, the possibility of reforming the exemption of liability granted to providers by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and Article 15(I) of the E-Commerce Directive particularly stood out. Other authors have suggested different structural approaches for these providers, to prevent any form of offensive behavior against women. The aim of this paper is to discuss these options in more detail, while acknowledging that reformation is not an easy task, but a necessary step towards dignity and equality for all women online.