This Site Is Trying To Combat Online Harassment Of Women

Hollaback, a non-profit organization that targets street harassment, has a new target: online abuse. Hollaback is launching a site, Heartmob, that aims to be a refuge and resource for women experiencing the condition known loosely as "being female on the internet."

"There is a false dichotomy between online and offline harassment," Emily May, founder of Hollaback told BuzzFeed News. "Both have the same root causes: sexism, racism, and homophobia -- and both have the similar effects: they silence victims and cause depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder."

Heartmob's work is twofold: it acts both as a support network, and as a place to document harassment. According to the site, a woman (or anyone) can ask for help from other people on the site for support, to help document the abuse, or to intervene. It's unclear exactly what intervening would look like, or how fellow bystanders can do it safely without putting themselves at risk. The site launches today, and will also have resources for survivors of harassment who are seeking information about legal options or how get help from other organizations.

Twitter is one of the platforms where harassment against women, or anyone who tweets about feminism or race – the two topics that act as a irresistible mating call to trolls – is undergoing its own reckoning of how to deal with harassment. Former CEO Dick Costolo admitted last year that Twitter "sucks" at dealing with abuse. New measures that make it slightly easier to report people for impersonation or harassment were rolled out, although I'd wager if you asked anyone who has been a victim of abuse on Twitter if the new reporting function was working well, they'd laugh in your face. Recently, a confusing new tactic they've employed is to un-verify serial harassers – a weird light slap on the wrist by removing the fake candy checkmark they invented in the first place.

Whether an outside site for harassment victims to turn to as a safe haven is better than say, improving policies and reporting, is unclear to me. The type of online harassment that people experience varies in a lot of ways, more than just what those of us glued to Twitter all day might think of. Women who have a large megaphone for their ideas attract more attention from trolls than most normal internet users. While some research shows a huge percent of people have witness or been a victim of online harassment, this isn't necessarily what we're imagining when we think of a feminist writer getting death threats on Twitter. This includes things like arguing with someone you know about politics on Facebook, or someone commenting that your dog should lose weight on your Instagram (this regularly happens to a friend of mine whose dog is normal weight, by the way). Those comments about her dog really irritate and upset her, but it's not apples-to-apples with someone writing violent rape threats to Anita Sarkeesian. I'm not denying by any means that both types of harassment are real, and that women are especially targeted. But the nuances are so varied its difficult to see how they could fit side by side on a site like Heartmob.

Also unclear is how the site won't just attract tons of trolls itself – you can almost imagine what 4chan would look like when it discovers the site. According to Heartmob's press release, it will be moderated, but the site's founders did not respond to questions about how it will be troll-proofed by publishing time.

While I don't have extremely high expectations for Heartmob to make a dent in ending harassment or the causes, that can't be the only goal. Doctors don't just try to find cures for cancer, they also treat patients who have it. At its best, Heartmob may be useful palliative care for the victims of harassment, something that has yet to really exist anywhere else on the internet.

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