Hong Kong NGO alerted to over 1,300 intimate images online, as it urges platforms to honour removal requests
Hong Kong Free Press
A Hong Kong group that fights sexual violence received reports of over 1,300 images shared online non-consensually over the past two years, the majority of which were from women.
They involved 171 victims, NGO RainLily said in a press conference on Tuesday. While 89 per cent of online content was successfully removed after the NGO flagged it to online platforms, challenges remained as content farms, messaging apps like Telegram and forum LIHKG were largely unresponsive to take-down requests.
RainLily, which supports victims of sexual violence, introduced the initiative Take-Down Assistance in April 2021 to help people whose intimate photos were distributed online without their consent to request their removal from different websites. Victims could make reports anonymously.
Victims of non-consensual intimate images included women and men, the former of which accounted for 71.3 per cent of the cases, the NGO said.
Messaging app Telegram has been widely reported in international media as a “hotbed” of non-consensual intimate images, according to RainLily. Jacey Kan, a senior advocacy officer at the group, said images were often shared there along with the victims’ personal information and even fabricated stories about them.
“These channels also have multiple sub-groups, where the same messages are shared, making it more difficult to take them down,” Kan said during the press conference. “Although these platforms have policies and reporting channels, they do not respond to and deal with removal requests effectively. “
Local forum LIHKG was one of the “least responsive social media platforms” to the NGO’s removal requests, Kan said.
The NGO urged operators of content farms as well as Telegram, LIHKG, and social media giant Meta to cooperate with NGOs and victims to remove images when asked.
RainLily also said that the city’s privacy watchdog, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (PCPD), should strengthen its role in dealing with non-consensual intimate images.
“Actually, a lot of intimate images show the face of the victims, but the PCPD rarely treat non-consensual intimate images as an invasion of personal data,” Kan said, urging the PCPD to play a “more proactive role.”
Image-based sexual violence
Since October 2021, Hong Kong has criminalised four offences that fall under image-based sexual violence – voyeurism; unlawful recording or observation of intimate parts; publication of image originating from above offences; and publication or threatened publication of intimate images without consent.
In addition to non-consensual intimate images, RainLily also received reports of victims dealing with the other offences. The NGO said that a total of 646 victims of image-based sexual violence sought help over the past two years.
See also: Victims struggle to seek help even after Hong Kong’s new law against voyeurism
Doris Chong, the executive director of RainLily, said that while victims can report to the police, frontline workers found that people were hesitant to do so as many of them felt scared and anxious.
Some cases it received concerned intimate images of children and adolescents, the NGO said, adding that it had transferred those cases to other service centres as they did not fall under their scope.
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