All four companies (Google, Meta, TikTok and Twitter) engaged in the Tech Policy Design Labs in 2021 are working on product innovations and prototypes related to OGBV and in line with their commitments. The following changes have been made since the platforms’ engagement with the TPDL in April 2021. Most of the progress updates listed below are based on public announcements made by Twitter.

Twitter has made substantial progress against the commitments in both areas. On curation, it has announced the following features – now all available globally:

• Safety Mode: temporarily blocks accounts for seven days for using potentially harmful language – such as insults or hateful remarks – or sending repetitive and uninvited replies or mentions (optional setting). Twitter is currently testing it directly with users and tracking adoption rates to understand its potential impact.
• Twitter Circle: lets users add up to 150 people who can see their Tweets when they want to share “with a smaller crowd.” (It can be noted that Instagram had introduced a similar feature in 2018 (“Close friends”)
• Unmentioning: allows users to remove themselves from conversations they don’t want to be a part of

On reporting, Twitter started testing in Dec 2021 anoverhaul reporting process aiming to make it easier for people to alert them of harmful behavior. This new Report Tweet flow is now available globally (Twitter communicated it was available “in all languages” – further research is needed to clarify this.). Building on human-centered design, this new approach lifts the burden from the individual to be the one who has to interpret the violation at hand. Instead it asks them what happened. This method is called symptoms-first. Twitter communicated it has enabled an increase of 50% of actionable reports during testing.

Twitter’s updated policy in December 2021 was seen as an important change to previous reporting mechanisms by the sector which did not previously centre the experience of the victim/survivor.

Beyond their specific TPDL commitments around curation and reporting, one should note the following work done by Twitter over the past year:

• Keep experimenting prompts to users to reconsider harmful tweets. This approach aligns with demand from civil society for platforms to intervene prior to offensive content being posted. Twitter communicated about “a shift towards more proactive strategies”. The prompt has now been developed in English, Portuguese, Spanish and Arabic. Peer reviewed research published in May 2022 concluded this feature led to 6% fewer offensive Tweets (based on the analysis of 200,000 tweets). This study also suggests that people who are exposed to a prompt are slightly less likely to compose future offensive replies.  
• Communication on safety tools: Twitter created and published an updated safety playbook and have launched various promoted tweet campaigns featuring existing and new safety tools-related videos. They found innovative ways to educate people via partnerships to highlight recent features like removing followers, Safety Mode, and conversation settings.
• Open API: Twitter is also unique among this cohort of tech companies with its open API that allows researchers to access data more easily, and entrepreneurs to build their own tools working on the platform including countering OGBV. Innovations in this space are available to the public beyond those produced by Twitter’s own product team.
• Work on hate speech lexicons: Twitter was noted for its approach to hate speech lexicons. Which directly links to protected characteristics and therefore people who are marginalized and more vulnerable to online gender based violence including “promot[ing] violence against or directly attack[ing] or threaten[ing] other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease. We also do not allow accounts whose primary purpose is inciting harm towards others on the basis of these categories.”

Twitter also has a Trust and Safety Council with a relatively stable membership over the last year. However, civil society experts questioned whether the format of relatively short calls with Trust and Safety Council members constituted meaningful engagement with CSOs, particularly where OGBV is not a primary focus of discussion in these forums. Some Global South members of the Trust and Safety Council explicitly expressed frustration that they are not engaged as cocreators but are presented with policy recommendations after Twitter has produced them and are asked for advice, with no accountability on whether their input is integrated.

All four companies (Google, Meta, TikTok and Twitter) engaged in the Tech Policy Design Labs in 2021 are working on product innovations and prototypes related to OGBV and in line with their commitments. The following changes have been made since the platforms’ engagement with the TPDL in April 2021.

Based on public announcements, Meta’s progress against the commitments over the past year seem to mostly relate to curation on Instagram, with the following new features available globally:

• Hidden Words: automatically filters DM requests which contain offensive words, phrases and emojis.

• Limits: designed to help protect people when they experience or anticipate a rush of abusive comments and DMs, this optional feature automatically hides comments and DM requests from people who don’t follow the user, or who only recently followed them. This feature was developed mostly for creators and public figures, who expressed experiencing sudden spikes of comments and DM requests from people they don’t know. It complements existing tools such as Block and Restrict, which are actions that can be taken by the user after viewing hurtful or triggering content.

• Increasing user agency to use filters on graphic content has also notably improved, including a “Sensitive Content Control”policy from Instagram which allows the user to decide how much sensitive content shows up on “Explore” pages (driven by the algorithm, although the algorithm itself hasn’t changed the amount of graphic content it feeds users).
• Meta’s transparency centre’s policy on violent and graphic content shows which content the company is filtering on Facebook due to their ‘community standards’, an important first step in transparency around this content.

On reporting, Meta communicated “more prominent” reporting features on Messenger.

Beyond the commitments but linked to OGBV, Meta has been working closely with the UK Revenge Porn Helpline on the launch of stopNCII.org to support victims of Non-Consensual Intimate Image (NCII) abuse.

It is also important to highlight Meta’s Oversight Board as a relevant development around transparency for Meta. Meta’s Oversight Board is an independent group looking to work with civil society organizations internationally, while exploring particular issues around safety and privacy. This Board published its first quarterly update in June 2021. While civil society organizations noted the potential impact of such a Board, its effectiveness, particularly in relation to OGBV, is unclear and yet to be evidenced.

All four companies (Google, Meta, TikTok and Twitter) engaged in the Tech Policy Design Labs in 2021 are working on product innovations and prototypes related to OGBV and in line with their commitments. The following changes have been made since the platforms’ engagement with the TPDL in April 2021.

TikTok have not publicly announced any changes to reporting processes or timelines. The development of clearer guidance on how to report different forms of content shows however progress in supporting users to navigate existing processes.

• On curation, Tiktok is testing a “safety reminder” on curation options for when users appear to be receiving a high proportion of negative comments. They are also doing early testing of a “dislike” button, enabling users to dislike any comments they deem irrelevant or inappropriate (not visible to the author of the comment). The aim is “to help inform how it ranks comments and give creators a way to control which ones are most visible” and eventually help users “feel more in control over comments.” It is unclear if the dislike button will enable to reduce the amount of abuse that women can see. Although the “dislike” would not be visible to the author of the comment, it could also create further tension. Indeed, YouTube, which had public dislikes for years, has now made dislike counts private saying that the feature was contributing to targeted harassment on the platform.

Beyond their specific commitments, the following initiatives by TikTok over the past year are positive steps towards a better response to OGBV:

• the update of its community guidelines to ban misogyny,  deadnaming (act of referring to a transgender or non-binary person by a name they used prior to transitioning, such as their birth name), misgendering, and content that supports or promotes conversion therapy programs;
• an awareness raising initiative on Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG), as part of the 16 Days of Activism against gender-based violence – through the launch of an in-app information hub in partnership with UN Women and NGOs.
• As title sponsor of the Women’s Six Nations and the UEFA Women’s European Football Champions in 2022, TikTok created a new series of videos encouraging to #SwipeOutHate and keep the negativity off the pitch, and added a temporary public service announcement (PSA) to football-related hashtags reminding people to report harmful content.

Tiktok also recently set up its first Trust and Safety advisory council for the Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey (MENAT) region in February 2022. Previously TikTok set up similar councils in the US (March 2020), Asia-Pacific (September 2020) and Europe (March 2021). There is yet to be any form of TikTok advisory council across Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. 

All four companies (Google, Meta, TikTok and Twitter) engaged in the Tech Policy Design Labs in 2021 are working on product innovations and prototypes related to OGBV and in line with their commitments. The following changes have been made since the platforms’ engagement with the TPDL in April 2021.

Google’s progress against the commitments is more difficult to assess based on public information, given the variety of entities within the company. For YouTube, we have not seen any announcements suggesting new positive steps on curation or reporting in relation to OGBV. Very recently, YouTube announced its YouTube Research Program, providing access to its data and tools to external researchers. The potential of this program to support OGBV-related research is yet to be explored.

Jigsaw – which is a Google entity – developed the Harassment Manager tool in collaboration with Twitter and civil society.