The owner of Facebook and Instagram is “reviewing a range of enforcement actions” to combat threats and harassment targeting female parliamentarians on its platforms, as the attack on independent MP Helen Haines last month casts a spotlight on the risks women in politics face.
“Women should be able to represent their communities, share their work and participate in public debate without facing threats, sexualised abuse or harassment,” Meta said on Tuesday.
“We’ve heard directly from women who serve in public life in Australia about the harassment and threats they’re experiencing across online platforms, including ours.”
It said it had spoken with “women leaders across the political spectrum”, including Communications Minister Anika Wells and an internal Labor committee of female MPs and senators.
The group raised online abuse with a company executive and called for a more proactive approach just days before the car-ramming attack on Ms Haines, who remains in a serious but stable after losing both legs.
Meta said it was “looking at how parliamentary offices manage the volume of comments they receive, which tools they find useful, and how our tools can better support public figures managing comments at this scale”.
It also pointed to 2021 policy updates shaping how the company responds to “forms of abuse that disproportionately affect women”, such as “claims about a person’s sexual activity, derogatory sexualised imagery and veiled threats”.
“Those seeking to harass others adapt their behaviour to evade our rules, and we recognise it is important to keep listening and to keep testing whether our efforts need to be updated to address new issues and concerns,” Meta said.
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Communications Minister Anika Wells welcomed the move, saying all Australians have “the right to be safe at work”.
“MPs from across the Parliament, will tell you that the abuse, threats and harassment they and their staff have received online have grown more frequent and more vicious,” she said.
“That is especially the case for women.
“That’s why I asked Meta to come to parliament and listen to stories of abuse, threats and harassment on their platforms first-hand.”
She said she asked Meta to come back with practical solutions, including actions “to make their platforms safer and how they are strengthening tools for people to protect themselves and their staff”.
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett revealed last week that her agency handled almost 800 protective security reports involving parliamentarians in the first six months of the year, with women three times more likely to be targeted with sexualised or gender-based threats than their male counterparts.
She said that female parliamentarians from “culturally and linguistically diverse communities were also more likely to experience frequent and varied offensive contact.”
“The threat themes directed at male parliamentarians also include threats generally gendered in nature, with accusations of weakness, femininity or subordinate masculine traits,” Ms Barrett said.
“Our caseload shows that threats to parliamentarians generally relate to four key aspects: policies, perceived performance, profile and personality.
“It would be wrong to think only inflammatory comments are creating the flood of threats.
“In some cases, just the debate causes the hate. In some cases, parliamentarians are being targeted because of their accent, what they look like, or their political party.
“The fact is this: at times there is an almost immediate link from a policy announcement or comment, to a threat being sent.”
