LinkedIn just sent me an update on their terms of use,
Maybe they finally paid attention to the letters businesswomen (myself included) have sent them objecting to the sexual come-ons we get in private messages. I would like to think that LI finally figured out how to scan profile pics to track down all the men who are using their penis as their professional calling card. As a known penis-lover, I still “ain’t got time” for stranger penis in a professional network.
But LI’s refreshed rules are deliberately vague. What counts as harassment these days on Social Media? Where do they set the bar? Because while it hardly amounts to a sex crime, I think it qualifies as sexual harassment when someone networks with you on LinkedIn and then immediately asks you to hot-chat with him. Or tries to draw you into pointless conversations which will always end up with an appeal for hot chat, money, or whatever else they believe women can be manipulated into giving a man. Or when they get angry at your rebuffs and maliciously report your profile as an act of revenge? (True story.)
There is no Internet standard on what counts as “harassment” online. Is it enough that someone sends you 3 shitty little sex fantasies of theirs in messaging or do you have to wait until the number surpasses 10? Do you report obnoxious horndogs on dating sites or is it your job to swipe them away? When people relentlessly hound you in chat-rooms, does that count as a form of harassment or is it a known hazard of going to chat-rooms and women should just accept the risk and not bitch about it?
But at least LI is trying. Maybe. A little. Or at least they are becoming more aware that sexual harassment in the workplace extends to LI, where identities aren’t vetted and explicit images are only censored when reported (I don’t have the heart to report them, they look so vulnerable all naked like mole-rats in the wild).
Forget about bona fide stalkers. Social Media pretend they don’t exist. Reporting them on LI is futile. LI will not share any details about malicious agents even if they’re making your life miserable anonymously. An LI employee explained the reasons why to me (legal considerations) but once you’ve been stalked, you feel victimized. And you want some justice, if only to know who the idiot was so you can block them. Good luck: LI and FB don’t want you to know who is using their platforms to ruin your life. It feels like they take the malicious reporter more seriously than the victims, adding to the sh*tstorm in one’s womanly soul.
I was really surprised a couple of months ago when I got trolled hard by a stalker on FaceBook (aka, “that last time I got kicked off FB for no reason”), and tried to get some info from FB on their policies about how to report stalking. Turns out FB doesn’t even know what a stalker is.
Stalker isn’t even in the FB HELP vocabulary! I guess FB doesn’t want us to think anyone would ever stalk anyone on FB even though that’s practically why FB exists, to let people stalk anyone they want.
Don’t be fooled by their so-called privacy policies. No matter how many privacy settings you click on FB, you can’t keep them all away. I’ve closed my timeline down to the max and don’t let it show up on Google, yet unknown people still find me and contact me with FB messenger. They can send me confidential messages on my professional page too. And they do. They introduce themselves by sharing intimate details about their anatomy. Sometimes they attach a porn image that turns them on. It’s happened on Twitter too. People using Direct Messaging to send unwanted porn, unwanted penii, unwanted come-ons.
Am I supposed to be flattered because I’m 62? I know some people think I should and yet, oddly, I am not. I am downright dour about it. Seriously. If I want someone, I’ll let him know. Meanwhile, omg and wtf do younger women face in the Internet muck of unrelenting secret sexual harassment? I try to be picky on LI about who I accept, but how can one know if that business guy in a suit with an armful of credentials is, on the sly, typing to you with one hand while gaping at a pic of you in a business suit. I can’t begin to imagine what sexier young women deal with if a 62-year-old married therapist gets hit on in private messaging literally every time she visits LinkedIn.
What tools do women on the Internet have to let men know that they are predatory if send x-rated material without your consent? Zero. How do you explain that consent matters as much online as in real life — especially when it’s almost guaranteed to fall on deaf ears.
Should we shame Internet aggressors? Out them by name? Warn other people in our network about them? It sounds so harsh to police and punish them like this. But isn’t it harsh on us to have to wade through their unsolicited propositions and obscenities? Why do their needs matter more than ours?
I want to know when Social Media will finally face the fact that they actively enable and protect harassers, stalkers, and other malicious creeps.
