PLATFORM GOVERNANCE ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN: ANALYSIS OF INSTAGRAM, YOUTUBE, TIKTOK AND TWITCH COMMUNITY GUIDELINES

Resumen

In 2024, Safernet Brasil recorded 4,289 complaints of online violence or discrimination against women, making it the third most common complaint that year. When focusing on content aimed at minority groups, violence against women (VAW) accounts for the highest number of reports, a trend that has persisted since 2018. Literature describes violent practices targeting women using terms such as "gendered cyberhate," "gendered e-bile" (Jane, 2017), "cybersexism" (Poland, 2016), and "gendertrolling" (Mantilla, 2013). Additionally, the literature highlights growing phenomena on digital platforms, including gender political violence and gender disinformation, which involve practices like coordinated abuse and gender-based defamation (Judson, 2021). This paper examines how Twitch, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok propose gender-based violence governance on their space. Through a documental research of their Terms of Use, Community Guidelines, and related documents, we aim to highlight aspects of platform governance regarding VAW, specifically how these platforms propose to self-regulate content within their spaces. We focus on their understanding—or lack thereof—of online VAW, drawing on previous studies that explore platform governance around topics like hate speech (Santos et al., 2023). Our analysis focuses on four aspects: types of restrictions on VAW-related content; how gender appears in the documentation; proposals for combating online VAW; and identification of other vulnerabilities faced by women in these spaces. Parcial results shows lack of specific guidelines regarding VAW and of gendered violence data in content removal reports that prevents an accurate understanding of VAW.