In a recent high-profile case, intimate photographs of 100 celebrities—all of whom were women—were stolen and shared without consent. Google is now facing the possibility of a $100 million lawsuit, brought by over a dozen of the women whose privacy was violated, for refusing to remove the stolen photographs. In a letter dated October 1, the women’s attorneys wrote that “Google has exhibited the lowest standards of ethical business conduct, and has acted dishonorably by perpetrating unlawful activity that exemplifies an utter lack of respect for women and privacy. Google’s ‘Don’t be evil’ motto is a sham.”

In response, Google removed tens of thousands of the hacked celebrity photographs. Meanwhile, social media companies have been far less responsive to similar demands from ordinary citizens. “Hey @google, what about my photos?” tweeted revenge porn victim Holly Jacobs in the aftermath of the celebrity scandal. It remains to be seen how the courts will rule in the case of Meryam Ali, a Houston woman who filed a $123 million lawsuit against Facebook for failing to remove a false profile that showed her face superimposed on pornographic images. As writer Roxanne Gay poignantly observed in The Guardian, “What these people are doing is reminding women that, no matter who they are, they are still women. They are forever vulnerable.”

In late August, Drew Curtis, founder of the content aggregator FARK, announced that the company had added “misogyny” to its moderation guidelines. FARK no longer allows rape jokes or threats. It also prohibited posts that call groups of women "whores" or "sluts," or suggest that a woman who suffered a crime is somehow asking for it. In a note to readers, Curtis wrote, “This represents enough of a departure from pretty much how every other large Internet community operates that I figure an announcement is necessary.” Responding in Slate, Amanda Hess praised FARK’s new policy but also pointed out its limitations: Just underneath his announcement, users posted dozens of comments about rape, whores, and “boobies.”

Announcements like FARK’s are important, particularly for catalyzing discussion, but policy changes alone can’t solve such a complex problem. Kate Crawford of MIT and Microsoft urges tech innovators to think about solutions “as pluralistically as possible.” She’d like to see more platforms develop systems that leave traces of when and why content has been removed or modified—an approach in play at Wikipedia, for instance.

Other experts agree that companies have a responsibility to provide greater transparency. They also need to dedicate more staff to understanding and performing moderation. They need to attract and retain female engineers, programmers, and managers. They need to invite experts in violence prevention to their tables. Whether online or off, there seems to be an increasing consensus, from the NFL to the White House, that misogyny requires a broad societal response. As President Obama put it in mid-September, “It is on all of us to reject the quiet tolerance of sexual assault and to refuse to accept what’s unacceptable.”

Soon after Hess’s piece appeared on Slate, a reader posted it on a FARK message board and users filled the comment thread mocking the policy and discussing the best way slip a thermometer into Hess. So far, that thread has not been removed. As Hess herself put it, “Policing misogyny is fabulous in theory. In practice, it’s a bitch.”

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