And I'm gonna welcome you all to this session about online law or online violence against women. And this is a session when I can uh what I would like to address a advices to front the digital violence against women. First of all, my name is Linda Patin.I'm a technology journalist in Colombia. I'm author of the book, what the hell does influencers do? Uh A member, an activist from the campaign take Back the Tech by Koro and A PC, which works with women empowerment. And this year I was a nominee in the category of ethical dimensions of information society by the E UN institution of information society. So let's jump to the topic. I'm gonna talk about real impacts and why the virtual issues affects the real life. And I would like you to all the drop your questions, your comments in the chat because I'm gonna be super uh looking for them in order to keep talking. So first of all, we have to say that internet has serious gaps. As you may know, just 46% of the world's population is still unconnected and if they are unconnected, they are also unconnected to the possibilities and opportunities that internet and technology brings with them. Uh This situation is only getting worse when you talk about the inequity that exists in other topics as income, education and gender uh gaps, internet penetration in developed countries. Such example is by 8 86%.

While in developing countries, this drops to 47% and less advanced countries according to UN. Uh it goes down below the 20%. This chart that I'm presenting here is the information of internet penetration rate for men and women in 2019 by the uh International Telecommunication Union.

You can find it on internet, but I want to check it better in this specific uh data and is the worldwide average internet penetration rate for men and women. And as we see in this chart, we're seeing that women, internet users proportion is 10% lower than men, internet users world wide. And this situation in developing countries goes with the gap increasing to a 12%. But my question is, is it s that some people says that technology does not have any discriminatory uh gaps or biases. But is IC T access really objective as we see? Are we women are less empowered and less in uh direction roles within the company? As an example, just 5% of the Fortune 500 CEO S list are women or in the industry of IC T. Just two out of 10 people are women in directing roles. Also, we as women dedicate 2.5 more time to unpaid or domestic work. And this lead us to a different kind of time uses that for vas to having free time to study new things, to explore new technologies. And also there's a fact that girls are often the first ones to be pulled off out of school to take house works. So another kind of gaps that we find is less income and less IC T studies, women around the world are earning around 23% less than men. And in IC T industry, this gap goes between 15% and 25%.

Uh depending on the jobs and it is on the same labors. So basically in women talking about IC T access, we have less income, less free time, which lead us to a less outdated technology, right? For example, if you have a mother in a home, it's obviously that she is going to invest in their Children first than having the last flagship of one or another brand in a smartphone, for example, right? And although also we we face gender stereotypes about if women are allowed or not are good or not in the technical field. And also we have more sexualized attacks. So I'm gonna talk after this little context about digital violences and I'm gonna put you an example. Uh there was a little girl of 16 years old who was studying in, in her university and she started to receive uh threats, online threats via uh towards email. And that was her institutional email, the email in the, in the college. And she started to receive messages as we're gonna kidnap you, we're going to destroy you. We're gonna cut you down in pieces. We're gonna sell you for sex trafficking. And these things really affected the 16 years old girl. She dropped up to this uh for years, she entered with despair uh and the present situation and I'm gonna put it like this. Uh one of the worst things for her was that she didn't even knew never who was the attacker.

And also when she claimed to policemen that she was being abused and violent, that digitally what the prosecutors and the police department said that was uh you can shoot down your email account, you know, it's not that bad and maybe this little 16 years old is right now talking to you about this topic.

This is why this is so important to me. Massive communication with social media anonymity generates a disproportionate effects on the online violences against women. And this is a different thing that we are not talking enough. So it's not the same to be a shame in a classroom than being mocked by billions of views, comments and users that you have ever been able to net, right? I'm not sure if you have heard about this uh term. I'm sorry for the image that maybe is kind of explicit, but this is something that is happening right now. And this is the kind of technologies that we are as women facing violence against women online. So this is a deep new basically is A I Softwares available online towards web app or an application, mobile apps uh where users can fake new pictures with realistic results as you might see, maybe maybe the shapes are not perfect, but this can do a really harm to a girl as I was when I was 16 years old, this is the real image.

And as you might know right now, this can be a picture of any of us or any teenager in their social media or Instagram account in a bikini picture in a bitch that's not even hard to find. So these kind of tools are basically creating news out of virtually anyone. It's letting the power of anybody to get naked just with a couple of pictures. These are the uh tools that I found online. Sorry if they are in Spanish. This is a message where it says that we do not keep the images, but also we do not take any responsibility because of the images created with this software. So basically they're washing their hands. This is another example of what is possible to do with this software. And I know that many people can say like this is a joke as they usually say with everything that is violent against the minority and they just kissing their own racism or chauvinism. But what leads me to think that this is really a discriminatory tool is that if you try it with men, it does not work. You know, this is a specific A I software designed for women to make them naked. So when I talk about digital violences, uh I talk of the different impacts, maybe there are not uh bruises, there are not physical impacts or signs that you can see that this person is being violented.

But uh there's these four topics that allowed us to talk about this psychological impact of digital violences. So the first one is mystification. Social media allows that when you are being mocked as an example, being a meme, it means that uh possibly more than 3 billion of users are going to see this content because it goes viral and imagine yourself being a teenager or, or just a normal person trying to get sleep knowing that internet goes 24 7.

And then maybe somebody in Australia in Africa, in China, in America, Latina, in Latin America is going to see this content and mock about you without even knowing you. This led us to a trivialization. And that's exactly what happened to me. I went to the policeman and this person said like, you know, this is not so important, this is not so bad. Uh You're overreacting, this is just digital, it's not a serious harm. And nobody can know what is the sensation, the feeling to being so intimidated to, to being afraid of going out of the streets, to being afraid that somebody looks at you and maybe because you are who you are, they are going to install, you kidnap you and, and do all the things that they threaten or do it.

So we lead us to a standardization that is actually people normalizing these things and believing that it's regular to insult each other in social media. And finally what as I said uh before anonymity, and this is a really key point because when you don't know who the attacker is, it's really really serious for you to not have a face to blame off or feeling that anybody can be the attacker behind these threats. This is an online violence against women classification that I used and I will be very, very happy if you all go out of here with these concepts and just share it with older women because all I want with this session is you to get this information and spread it with others in order to care each others uh in this uh online law environment.

So the first one is the most common is cyberbullying. Cyberbullying seeks to intimidate its victim. And there are three things that that we have to talk about uh cyberbullying. The one that the very first one is surveillance and is the use of technology tools in order to follow or invade the privacy of the victim, monitoring chats locations or movements. This happens very often between couples. For example, uh the other one is impersonation when uh the chat impersonates the victim and uh start sends messages in order to create difficult situations for the victim. But affecting the reputation of this one. With third ones, imagine that I'm going to send a nude to your father.

I'm gonna send this fake nude to your colleagues in your workplace. And this really affects the situation. And finally harassment and I uh category harassment in two parts because you can talk about harassment as something that it can be brutal by content or brutal by volume.

So bru by content is basically when you have a punch by a gorilla and uh by volume is when you are attacked by a million of bees, something like that. But in internet, so imagine the gorilla is like a huge image of you're getting naked and you are so embarrassed of this situation. This can be moral to somebody. But other way, uh imagine the volume like dumb or silly are really not heavy insults but receiving them by over 100 accounts at the same time by three years period is going to cause this kind of psychological effects. The second one is extortion and it seeks to dominate the victim. It's actually uh going in two parts. The first one is the disclosure thread when somebody gets hacked and maybe they download the news images that they were available in the crowd. So they are kind of the threatening to publish it in order to affect the reputation. And sometimes the the attacker demands uh control of moral uh control of the body of the victim. And sometimes they threat with disclosure this material in order to produce more sexual material without consent. And the poor revenge, the bad porn, revenge, bad call porn, revenge is a word that I don't like to use.

But it is the most common word to understand when somebody is disseminating explicit material without the consent of the victim. And normally this kind of material seeks to humiliate the women to not reciprocating love or not acting accordingly with their roles. And finally, we have hate speech.

Uh The hate speech seeks to censorship the victims. Uh we could resume hate speech as an ominous uh attack because it's basically to strike down the arguments or the person by attacking the victim with different categories of people, you know, as race, as age, as sex, as uh gender, as whatever they want. Uh And this can be the the typical comments as you cannot uh get opinion about this because you were born in a country that is full with narco dealers and drug dealers. So don't talk about it. And that's seriously kind of a hate speech because it's attacking the entire nation uh with the discriminatory uh terms without letting the people to define each other with diverse uh o of themselves and systematic. This is another way to make hate fetch. Oh The chronometer song, I have to hurry. So, systematic effects uh is when you uh have different tools as whatsapp groups or maybe other automated tools that lets you to disseminate hate speech and ideas to even promote them using ads platforms. So this is where we see racist uh memes or maybe groups that are being created privately in Facebook to talk bad about women. Finally, hate speech is not covered by freedom of speech. This is important to see uh because this violence promotes silence.

And at the end, the elimination of the victims choosing to eliminate their own profiles are going to impact the internet diversity itself. So what can we do? The basics actually having a basic cybersecurity habits as you're changing your password or maybe causing any potential breaches is normal.

Also using safer apps for texting whatsapp is not the best idea, maybe signal would be a better option but also being created in ways to make your notes less personal, cover your tattoos, maybe use mask or something like that. And I do this really often and it's Google yourself. This is a good way to track what is happening in the web and how are you being noticed in the web? So this is a way to lead you to control the information you share. What else can I do if this happens to you, the most important thing that I would love you to take out of this is that you are not guilty and you're not alone. This is not something that happens casually. This is a systematic violence uh translated to the virtual world because of the systematic violence against women that we suffer on the non virtual environments. And remember that sexual freedom or your role as a woman shouldn't be reasons for attacking. So first of all, try not to feel guilty. And also despite the violation of the intimacy, uh if you were victim of extortion, your body is still yours to feel, to touch and to care and you, you own your own body and you can embrace it. What can you do? Also, you try not to delete it. Maybe when you are a victim of this, this first sensation is I will erase it because I want it to go away, but this would not make him stop.

So track anomalies and take screenshots in order to document this evidence, evidence before erasing anything and use the basic report tools available in social media platforms. Uh This becomes uh uh tighter with rules. And also there are a couple of laws of against poor revenge in some countries that can be used in order to lead this to a trial and finally seek your own mental health. And what can we do if we are not the directing bit? But we want to help. It's a community, we have to a big res responsibility in order to help each others. So for example, if it happens to your daughter, your sister, your friend or any woman that surrounds you, please do not tell her that this is not that bad or that she can just uh disconnect from social media and that's not going to be just so deep or, or, or that bad uh support.

This is vital and, and, and vital to feel safe about each in the case. An example to other women like, don't do not send nude pictures because you're going to be ending like Fenna and that's not correct because this is the problem is not the sexting itself but the uh abuse of confidence for somebody to use this intimate energies in order to humiliate you, you can ask for help and, and also starting to helping the victims by not uh judging them before because they do it something or they didn't do something and try to explain them that they count on you as a non virtual network to support.

I would like to hear you. What would you do in these cases? I don't know if you have any questions. Uh I just wanted to finish. I, I know that there's just minutes to left that uh together we're stronger. And I think that this decision to speak out is very, very difficult. But if you want to do it so feel free to reach me to contact me. I will gladly follow up. So, thank you. Thank you so much, Alejandra Cerda is asking uh how can we support the women that has been victim of extortion? I would think that uh the first thing is to ask her if she wants to move on to talk about this publicly and maybe making the uh denounce uh uh to an authority, legal authority. But also, so I think that this person might feel uh very guilty about what happened. So some women uh decide just any relationships about that. So one way to support them is to make them feel safe with you. Uh If they are your couples or your ex or your friends, you, you can ask them how, how can you help in that way? Uh Well, what should be the role of the government to tackle this problem and help women tech communities to get more empowered or support?

I think that the laws are really important just putting in a stop to the uh sharing of uh sexual and explicit images without consent should be a really huge step. And also I think that uh the lines uh available for violence against women should start accepting these uh issues too with uh regarding technology. So, thank you so much. I think that we have uh just all the time. I'm not sure how this is going to end, but thank you so much, please. Let me your uh link the accounts or your Twitter account. So I can follow you back. Uh You can count on me uh in that link, the pod card in Instagram or Twitter and I'm Linda Patino in linkedin. Thank you so much for joining to this session and I hope that you can share this uh content with your friends and your family. Thank you.