Need for greater accountability from tech platforms on digital gender abuse, says report

A man from Gurugram, Haryana, recently confronted and apprehended a Rapido driver who allegedly sent inappropriate messages to his wife through the app while she waited for her ride. Abhimanyu, who posted a video of the confrontation on Instagram, claimed the driver was using someone else’s identity on the platform. The incident sparked outrage, not only over the violation of safety and privacy but also the tech platform’s failure in ensuring basic user authentication.

This isn’t an isolated case. Dating app scams, impersonation, revenge porn, and cyberstalking have become part of an unsettling digital routine. A new survey by The Dialogue and the Alliance for Cyber Trust and Safety (ACTS) attempts to quantify and understand this growing phenomenon—technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV)—by surveying 4,000 voices across gender, sexuality, and class in ten Indian cities. TFGBV takes many forms, including cyberstalking, doxxing, deepfakes, impersonation, economic fraud, and non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII).

One of the report’s most striking revelations is that 68.87% of men surveyed reported experiencing some form of TFGBV—more than the 54.80% of women who said the same. While often seen as a problem impacting women alone, the data suggests men are increasingly vulnerable too, particularly to impersonation, cyberstalking, and economic fraud. However, it is transgender and non-binary individuals who remain the most disproportionately affected.

But despite the increasing prevalence of such abuse, only 30% of survivors report the incidents to law enforcement. Around 42% turn to friends and family, and merely 26% raise complaints on tech platforms. A lack of trust, opaque redressal processes, and under-resourced legal and psychological support systems form a trifecta of barriers that discourage victims from speaking out.

“There’s a fundamental gap in how digital violence is understood and addressed in India,” says the report. Unlike physical violence, TFGBV thrives on anonymity, virality, and permanence, making it harder to trace perpetrators and recover from the trauma. Over 64% of those surveyed said their mental health had been severely impacted—manifesting in anxiety, social withdrawal, and even economic losses.

What enables such abuse to persist with impunity is the fragmented and outdated legal framework. Existing cyber laws are poorly aligned with gender justice principles, and enforcement is weak. The lack of gender sensitivity among authorities and the judiciary only compounds the problem. More than two-thirds of respondents stressed the need for greater judicial awareness, especially at lower courts, to handle such cases effectively.

Meanwhile, tech platforms have largely taken a reactive rather than proactive stance. While their policies outline redressal mechanisms, the burden often falls on victims to prove harm, report cases, and follow up. “There is little clarity on how decisions are made or how perpetrators are held accountable,” the report notes. It calls for mandatory risk assessments, robust content moderation, and survivor-centric support systems from platforms.

The report also found that in many instances, the perpetrators weren’t strangers but family members, intimate partners, friends, or co-workers, complicating how society views abuse in digital spaces.

To address these challenges, the report suggests a multi-pronged approach: harmonising cyber laws with gender justice frameworks, embedding digital literacy and gender sensitivity in schools and workplaces, and building inclusive reporting mechanisms that don’t rely solely on formal institutions. It also urges a shift in parental and societal attitudes towards gender roles from an early age.

At a time when India’s internet penetration is growing, and with it, the ways in which people date, work, and connect online, the digital world cannot remain a blind spot in conversations about safety and justice.