But Hera Hussain is worried that cultural sensitivities are not recognised by tech companies, where reported images are often first assessed by an AI moderation system trained largely to detect nudity. Identifying images that could be problematic is much more nuanced than spotting bare skin and Hussain says a user may need to be very persistent to make sure a human moderator reviews a picture.
There is concern that there is not enough human oversight as companies lean on cheaper automated tools and consolidate regional expertise into teams covering vast, diverse areas. For example, in a disclosure to the US Senate Judiciary Committee, the CEO of Snapchat revealed cuts to its trust and safety team – its safety and moderation headcount fell from a 2021 peak of just over 3,000 to about 2,226 in 2023 – a 27% reduction.
Campaigners want the logic reversed. At present, Hussain says, platforms investigate and then take down. She believes they should take down first, for 24 hours, pending review, and investigate after. “What are you going to lose?” she asks. In our interview, Hussain points to a case that came to light in 2017 where three sisters in Pakistan were killed after a video of them singing and clapping at a wedding was shared – three of their male relatives were given life sentences.
The reporting burden, meanwhile, falls almost entirely on the victim, who must locate the images, view them repeatedly, and submit each one, with no simple mechanism to remove copies in bulk.
“You go through all that retraumatisation,” Hussain says, “and then you might not even get a response.”
That distinction matters most, the report concludes, because the harm is rarely contained to the woman in the frame. It details how a leaked image lands on her whole family, fathers unable to face work, sisters whose marriages collapse, households watched “in a shameful manner”. Honour is collective, and the threat of collective shame is itself a tool of control.
For Mahnoor, the cost is measured in the people who no longer speak to her. Her daughter, who is three-and-a-half years old, has begun to notice that the relatives upstairs do not greet her mother. The images that took her voice were, by any platform’s definition, harmless.
Some countries do treat the sharing of images as a question of privacy. France has long recognised a “right to one’s own image”: under Article 9 of its Civil Code, every person, public figure or private citizen, has an exclusive right over how their image is used, subject to exceptions for news and matters of genuine public interest. A minister on holiday, however, retains a right to privacy.
The UAE goes further still, criminalising the photographing of people without consent even in public places, with no broad public-interest exemption.
“Image-based abuse is bigger and wider than nudes” and there is “systemic failure” concludes Hera Hussain.
She says the police, courts and tech platforms “can all do so much better in supporting survivors”, adding that “if you’re experiencing image-abuse know that it is not your fault, you are not alone and there are organisations like Chayn that are here to support you”.
