As digital violence increases, so are the strategies to stop it

In 2019, in the midst of the groundbreaking feminist movement “Ni una menos,” or “Not one less,” in English, that had spread across Latin America, Argentine journalist Rocío Alterleib began posting on social media in support of feminist causes. These included issues from the legalization of abortion, to the rise in gender-based violence and femicide. But she soon became a victim of the same violence she was fighting against.

Using the handle @femininjaok on Instagram, she recreated Argentina’s national anthem into a “feminist anthem.” It soon went viral, and things quickly got out of hand.

“I was getting severe threats, getting called a ‘feminazi,’ people saying they’d kill me, rape me, dismember me,” Alterleib told Devex in an interview, adding that she was sued by a lawyer under criminal charges, including for “violating the national anthem.” Though the lawsuit was rejected by judges, the impact on Alterleib’s life didn’t stop. By that point, her personal information was all over the internet — including her full name, ID, address, and the names of her relatives.

She reported the attackers, but that only increased the violence being unleashed against her. She started to distrust the authorities and their tools to counteract these types of violence.

“Digital violence is unexplored — it’s believed to be just ‘revenge porn’,” she said. But it’s much more than that, she noted, as she and many others would learn.

Florencia Zerda, a lawyer and director of GENTIC, an NGO advocating against digital violence said that incidents of digital violence against public personalities, activists, journalists, and human rights advocates “have increased in the past years,” including attacks against Argentina’s former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and people from the LGBTQ+ community.

But cases of digital violence became systematic when activists across the region started to speak up against it. Threats, nonconsensual sharing of internet content, and “doxxing” — the posting of personal information without permission — became strategies to discourage them from raising the alarm. 

According to a 2023 report by cybersecurity firm BTR Consulting, almost 61% of women and girls in Argentina who use social media suffered harassment, and only 1 in 10 people reported it. It also found that almost half of girls and teenagers were threatened with physical or sexual violence, and one out of five girls and young women have abandoned or reduced their use of social media platforms after being attacked. The consequences of digital violence range from panic attacks and stress to isolation, as well as loss of work and social bonds.

This is one of the reasons why the Olimpia Law, a policy designed to institutionalize the fight against digital gender-based violence — and which was recently passed by Argentina’s Congress — is seen as so important to break the cycle of digital violence.

The law was born out of a case of digital abuse in Mexico in 2012. Then 18-year-old Olimpia Coral Melo became a victim when her ex-boyfriend leaked intimate videos of her which spread widely across her city Huauchinango in the state of Puebla. She tried to report it to the police, but at the time, digital violence wasn’t a crime.

“Undergoing digital violence is something that gets tattooed on your skin, it endures over the years,” said Coral Melo of her experience. “Whenever someone googled me they would find a sexual video — available for anyone to see.”

She started to organize with other victims. Her work sparked the creation of the “Ley Olimpia” or “Olimpia Law” in 2018, which was approved by the Mexican Congress in 2021 and is now implemented across 19 Mexican states.

“Thanks to hundreds of women who, like me, had been victims of sexual violence on the Internet, it was passed throughout Mexico, and crossed borders,” she said.

Zerda noted that the Olimpia Law covers both the domestic dimension of digital violence — such as the nonconsensual sharing of private material or “sextortion” — and public attacks, like those that women in politics often face on social media.

The law was replicated in Argentina in October 2023 when digital violence was added to the already existing Gender Violence Act. It is reportedly now moving forward in Ecuador, Honduras, and Bolivia, as well as the city of Los Angeles in the United States. In 2020, UN Women recognized it as a milestone for Latin American countries.

But there is still a long way to go.  

“There is a lack of training for justice administration institutions in different states and countries. Legislators need to support [initiatives like Olimpia], and women need to get trained in digital security,” said Coral Melo.

According to Zerda, in Argentina victims are struggling to see the law implemented in their cases. The law was passed the same month that Javier Milei won the first round of Argentina’s presidential elections and a month later the second round, propelled to power by a libertarian movement. One of the first measures taken by President Milei in late 2023 was to shut down the Ministry of Women, Genders and Diversity, which was in charge of policies aimed at tackling gender-based violence.

“In order to implement the law properly, judges would need to be trained … to identify these cases properly. The training has not been implemented, and victims find it hard to have their experiences acknowledged socially,” Zerda said.

She noted that the cultural shift in Mexico has been, at this point, much stronger than in other Latin American countries: “There were huge campaigns. It’s a cultural change that’s already been consolidated — people know that some things are wrong, that some others constitute crimes.”

Raquel Farfán, one of the activists who has been pressing for the approval of the Olimpia Law in Argentina, said that the lack of official statistics makes it hard to move forward with public policies. “And there’s an overwhelmingly high amount of cases,” she said. “Many girls reach out to us [activists against digital violence] looking for help.”

Several independent initiatives across the region have been established to face this growing issue. Organizing similarly to the evolution of the “Ni una menos” movement, activists from all over Latin America and the Caribbean gathered in 2018 to create “Ciberseguras,” online communities with tools and resources to identify, prevent, and tackle digital gender-based violence. They developed a series of materials and resources about how to protect online privacy, safeguard phones and laptops, learn about technology and feminism, and combat online attacks.

In the meantime, Farfán said that it is crucial that women across Latin America speak up about these issues and how they are affected by them, to stop them from feeling like it is just a personal situation, rather than something systemic.

“We need activists to speak up, to place lawsuits — it’s important they know we’re not alone, and that what happened to us is not our fault,” she said.

Update, March 21, 2024: This article has been updated to clarify Raquel Farfán’s title.

Visit Ctrl Shift Equality — a series produced by Devex in partnership with UN Women and the Generation Equality Action Coalitions on Technology and Innovation for Gender Equality, and Gender-Based Violence.

To learn more about the multi-stakeholder commitments made to the Generation Equality Action Coalitions, click here.