Bumble is fighting for ‘Cyberflashing’ to be criminalised
Image courtesy The Sun
The women-first relationship building app Bumble are calling for the sending of unsolicited sexually explicit images and videos to be criminalised.
‘Cyberflashing’ disproportionately affects women, who report to have been sent images of genitals without consent. Cyberflashing can include the sending of images and videos without consent via social media, messaging apps, WhatsApp, WiFi, Bluetooth and even AirDrop.
Research shows that 1 in 4, (41%) millennial women have experienced cyber flashing in the UK. Nearly half (48%) of those aged 18-24 have received a sexual photo without consent in the last year.
Over the past three years, 79% of women under the age of 44 have become more concerned with their online and offline safety.
Bumble, who famously stand up for women rights and fight for life changing causes are calling for the Government to recognise that ‘Cyberflashing’ is an issue on the rise, and so new legislation must be introduced to protect those at risk.
Offline, flashing or’ indecent exposure’ carries a maximum sentence of 2 years in prison. The online community were reminded of the impact that flashing has on a victim given the recent case of Sarah Everard, who fell victim to murder and rape following indecent exposure.
Passing the law in the UK and Wales would bring the UK up to speed with Scotland who passed the law over a decade ago.
Founder and CEO of Bumble Whitney Wolfe Herd describes the issues, “Now more than ever, we spend a considerable amount of our lives online and yet we have fallen short of protecting women in online spaces. Cyberflashing is a relentless, everyday form of harassment that causes victims, predominantly women, to feel distressed, violated, and vulnerable on the internet as a whole. It’s shocking that in this day and age we don’t have laws that hold people to account for this.
“At Bumble we’ve been taking steps to tackle cyberflashing for years. We built a Private Detector feature that captures and blurs nude images, and successfully campaigned to make unsolicited nude images illegal in Texas. But this issue is bigger than just one company, and we cannot do this alone. We need Governments to take action to criminalise cyberflashing and enforce what is already a real-world law in the online world.”
Image courtesy Bumble
