Platformed Hate Speech Against Women: Beyond Self-Regulation

Abstract

In this article, we argue that hate speech against women (‘sex-based vilification’) occurring on major social media platforms exists at the intersections of patriarchy and platform power and is thus platformed. Such speech is amplified as an aspect of platforms’ instrumental power, and accommodated, and thus authorised, as an aspect of platforms’ structural power. Platforms also seek to maintain control or influence over the conditions for their own regulation and governance through use of their discursive power. Relatedly, there is a privileging of self-regulatory action in current laws and law reform proposals for platform governance, which we argue means that platformed sex-based vilifica..