According to a Pew survey, a stunning 92 percent of adults under 30 have experienced online harassment. The anti-harassment organization wants to tackle that problem head-on, so they've launched a Kickstarter to fund the creation of a platform called HeartMob, which they say would change the game for victims of harassment. HeartMob users who are harassed online would be able report their harassment and decide whether to make their report public or private. If they keep it private, they can still access resources on how to report the harassment to authorities, safety information, and laws about online harassment. If they make the harassment public, they can choose to engage bystanders, letting the bystanders know how the harassment victim would like them to respond — by intervening, showing public support, or taking other action, like sending a supportive comment to a harassment victim in need.
"After over 10 years of running Hollaback!, I've been harassed and attacked online repeatedly. Even worse, we've seen our site leaders, partners, and friends harassed online — and we've seen incredible activists and outspoken women leave the Internet, and the work, as a result. We saw that women, people of color, and LGBTQ folks were disproportionately impacted," Emily May, the co-founder and executive director of Hollaback!, said in a statement. "In October 2013 we got fed up. Everyone was talking about online harassment, but few had solutions. We thought — why don't we take everything we've learned from addressing street harassment, and apply it to this completely different landscape: the Internet."
Hollaback is using Kickstarter to raise the $10,000 necessary to develop the platform. They have until May 15 to raise the funds.
Follow Jill on Twitter.
Jill Filipovic is a contributing writer for cosmopolitan.com. She is the author of OK Boomer, Let's Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind and The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness. A weekly CNN columnist and a contributing writer for the New York Times, she is also a lawyer.
