Jews in the D
20 | MAY 7 • 2020
to Lie Still and Take It.
• It’
s Your Fault for Being Hot.
• I’
m Gonna Beat Some Sense
into You.
• Thank God You Don’
t Have
Kids Because Hitler Should Have
Taken Care of the Jews (Ruden is
Jewish).
Ruden says her accounts have
been deleted from multiple apps
after she reported harassment
and cyberflashing. When she
follows up with the platforms,
her accounts may get reinstated
with an apology for the incon-
venience. Other times, she says,
she’
s been banned or blocked for
months.
On April 23, Ruden says she
reported a man on Plenty of Fish
for using hate speech against
her Jewish identity. She says her
account was then cancelled due
to “a violation of Terms of Use &
Community Guidelines.
”
These guidelines, Ruden
says, need to be reformed. The
AWOL movement includes a
Protest Demand Document,
which Ruden is co-crafting with
supporters. The in-progress
document currently calls for
timely and appropriate action to
abuses, background checks on
users and the implementation
of no-tolerance to hate speech,
unsolicited sexual image sharing
and vulgar language.
What someone says and does
outside their profile is often
ignored, Ruden says. “What’
s
public-facing is what these com-
panies care about. As soon as it
goes private in a direct message,
they don’
t want anything to do
with it.
”
In January, she and others
tweeted against Plenty of Fish
for stating that reports could
only be made about a person’
s
profile and that accounts would
be deleted for reporting “silly
disputes.
”
Ruden says she had wanted
to report a man who’
d made her
nervous by sending her several
unsolicited naked photos, leav-
ing her many voice messages
through the platform and saying
he wanted to surprise her at
work.
When she saw the warning
from Plenty of Fish, she chose
not to report him because she
didn’
t want her account can-
celled. “This language (‘
silly dis-
pute’
) is not only dismissive and
negligent,
” she says. “It’
s actually
complicit in the victim-blaming
and rape culture mentality that
permeates cyberspace.
”
Plenty of Fish has since
changed its report language,
which Ruden believes is a result
of her tweets. On Feb. 14, she
received a direct message from
the dating app on Twitter thank-
ing her for bringing the language
to their attention and stating
that a person’
s behavior would
now also be reportable.
But, Ruden says, reporting
someone’
s behavior is exactly
what got her kicked off the plat-
form recently.
When contacted by the JN,
Plenty of Fish did not comment
on the AWOL movement, but
shared the following statement
about their methods for banning
and deactivating accounts and
for handling reports of sexual
harassment:
“We have a zero-tolerance
policy against abuse or assault.
We encourage users to report
any bad online or offline behav-
ior immediately so our dedicat-
ed team can take appropriate
measures, such as removing and
blocking these accounts from
our platform. If a crime has been
committed, we encourage users
to report it to local law enforce-
ment.
”
Ruden’
s negative experiences
spill into social media, as well. In
one case, she says she received
an unsolicited sexual image on
Instagram. When she filed a
complaint, she says Instagram
responded that the incident
didn’
t violate community guide-
lines. Ruden blurred out the
genitals and posted the picture
to her story.
“It was removed for violating
community guidelines,
” she says.
“The person who sent it didn’
t
violate guidelines, but the person
who exposed it gets penalized?”
Instagram is where Ruden’
s
met many of her supporters, like
Dani James, a massage therapist
who lives in Colorado. Also
Jewish, James says she connected
with Ruden over the work they
both do to raise awareness of
online abuse toward women.
She remembers feeling hope-
ful when she joined the dating
realm but has since been dis-
heartened.
“I thought it was going to
be this fun thing, because after
being in a long-term relation-
ship, and really growing as a
human being, I was prepared,
”
she says. “I thought that I was
going to meet all these amazing
guys. Man, was I wrong.
”
Over the past six years, James
says she’
s received thousands of
“atrocious” messages: what men
want to do to her, lewd com-
ments about her body, the kind
of stuff you’
d smack him for in
person, she says, but in cyber-
space all the normal boundaries
are removed.
“Unsolicited dick pics?” she
asks. “Yeah, I’
ve received my
fair share of those. Every single
time it just makes me cringe. It’
s
always a violation.
”
After she reported cyberflash-
ing to Plenty of Fish, James’
s
account was put under “quar-
antine,
” she says, where she
wasn’
t able to refuse messages
Ruden makes art
featuring some of the
abusive, derogatory
or condescending
messages she has
received from men
over her years of
online dating.
“I thought that I was going to
meet all these amazing guys.
Man, was I wrong.”
— SAREY RUDEN
continued from page 19