A substantial number of the complaints against social media platforms in Israel in 2017 focused on sexual harassment, a report by the Israel Internet Association revealed Wednesday.
According to the data, 26% of the 4,980 complaints filed with the IIA, or 1,300 complaints, involved sexual harassment, and 42% of all complaints were filed against Facebook.
The report said that women complaining about sexual harassment on Facebook detailed incidents that included receiving lewd suggestions and sexually explicit images or videos from other users, either as posts on their walls or through the platform's messaging application.
"I received a message from an older man whom I don't know. He saw a photo I had posted of myself in a bathing suit and he wrote that he was willing to pay me for sex," one of the complainants, 22, told Israel Hayom.
"He explicitly wrote, 'I really want to sleep with you.' This was a direct message from a stranger and it horrified me. I really felt like someone had invaded my privacy and I didn't know how to deal with it. At first, I ignored him, but he messaged me again after a few days. If I could, I would immediately ask Facebook to delete his account. I ended up blocking him," she said.
The woman said that several days after the incident, the same man propositioned one of her friends via Facebook.
"I've heard about dozens of incidents where young women were harassed on Facebook. I have a friend who received a message from a man who asked to meet her and sent her a video of himself masturbating," she said.
Zionist Union MK Revital Swid, who heads the Knesset lobby for the elimination of cyberbullying and harassment, called on Facebook to allow users to report such incidents directly to the company's Ireland headquarters so that the issue could be dealt with immediately and users who sexually harass others would be prevented from doing so.
In a letter to the social media giant, Swid wrote that "users reporting offensive content on Facebook can choose from categories that include disturbing or violent content, hate speech, suicide concerns, spam and content featuring nudity. But as it turns out, despite the gravity of this issue, its prevalence and the fact that this is a criminal offense, there is no accessible category for reporting sexual harassment."
Virtual platforms "have a duty and a responsibility to protect users from sexual harassment," Swid told Israel Hayom. "Facebook allows users to quickly and easily report content that contains violence, shaming or spam, but it doesn't allow them to easily report content that constitutes sexual harassment."
Facebook was unavailable for comment.
