gisw13_chapters

harmful activity are generalised, as in the case ofchild pornography, official agencies are expectedto act in response. As documented by EROTICS researchersSonia Correa, Marina Maria and JandiraQueiroz, the Brazilian Attorney General’s Office,with the support of the civil society Internet SteeringCommittee (CGI), negotiated a binding agreementwith Google to ensure Federal Police accessto the data logs of their popular social network,Orkut, in order to aid investigations aimed at prosecutingpaedophiles. 10Official internet regulation is expected to protectusers from one another, although that may notalways be the case when attacks come in the formof hate speech, sexual violence or discrimination.Queer users in many parts of the world, and sexworkers everywhere, are emblematic examples ofthe lack of technical or legal support against internetthreats that sexual dissidents suffer. Not onlyare they seldom protected, but they are also oftensubject to censorship, filtering and blocking.However, some forms of violence amongst usersrequire minimal technical skill – usually knowinghow to access the internet is enough to engagein trolling, hate speech and other forms of harassment.This form of negative interaction posesdirect threats to both networks and individuals,sometimes causing users to leave an online networkor interactive space, or to remain silent, oftentraumatised. Whole virtual communities mayin turn just dissolve or disappear. But in responseto trolling, hate speech and harassment, at timesusers also take charge and speak out in response,which may in turn lead to the strengthening oftheir identities.Communities can and often do overcome thechallenge and profit from the experience of beingunder attack. This makes them stronger andmore capable to strategically resist violence andprejudice. 11 EROTICS researchers Bruno Zilli andHoracio Sívori reported on a female-only Brazilianonline community for lesbian and bisexual womenfor whom addressing perceived threats was a concreteform of empowerment. The group developedrules and mechanisms of self-regulation, which includedthe censorship of explicit sexual content;the exclusion of disruptive members, particularlythose suspected of being males posing as females;and the screening of prospective members. 12 Theflipside of the coin is that such measures challengethe prized internet ideals of freedom of ex-10 Ibid.11 The Information Society12 www.apc.org/en/pubs/erotics-researchpression, deregulation, and resistance to any formof authority.State-sponsored responses to hate speech,trolling, harassment and other forms of onlineviolence and privacy breaches have mostly beenlimited to reporting, investigation and prosecutionmechanisms. One outcome is the – usually ineffective– banning or taking down of offensive content.This sort of “final solution” has the virtue ofeliminating a particular threat altogether. However,social perceptions and opinions on issues of sexualmorality are hardly settled. Offences motivated bysexual or other types of prejudice have the capacityto generate debate, which reflects a lack of anoffline consensus on their offensive nature. Banningand censorship are a way to avoid that debate,while the internet is often regarded, precisely, aspropitious for debate. Moreover, individuals andcollectives exercising their sexuality online havecome up with their own answers to deal with onlineattacks.Zilli and Sívori observed online forum interactionson a social network platform popular in Brazil,where lesbophobic content was regularly postedunder the guise of teasing and joking comments.Under Brazilian internet regulation and networkpolicy, hate speech can be reported, often resultingin content removal and banning. Despite that, lesbophobicpuns and jokes remained posted and generatedlong strings of comments, both celebratoryand accusatory. Most interestingly, LGBT or pro-LG-BT members of that social network often engagedwith the bigots, contesting their views and defendingthe sexual rights of lesbians, at times makingfun and calling them on their ignorance and narrowmindedness.While not necessarily conceived or experiencedas “activism”, as defined by establishedconventions of offline sexual rights politics, thisresponse represents a meaningful form of sexualaffirmation and struggle against hate speech andviolence based on sexual prejudice. 13Meanwhile, other online dangers linger beyond.EROTICS researchers Maya Ganesh and ManjimaBhattacharjya, 14 from India, write that although “theinternet undoubtedly allows women to find voice,agency and self-expression through the internet,securing their sexuality rights and communicationrights,” they still have to negotiate offline threats. 15The women they interviewed reported that:13 Ibid.14 Ibid.15 www.apc.org/en/pubs/issue/erotics-exploratory-researchsexuality-and-interne35 / Global Information Society Watch