All Harms (47)

The internet has opened up a vast landscape of potential online harms. Often, these harms are a direct translation of real-world abuse into digital spaces, revealing how deeply rooted societal ills can permeate even novel spaces. In other cases, the internet poses unique, digital-native harms, underscoring the profound ways the internet's connectivity and ubiquity can reshape our world, and sometimes do so for the worse.

The public discussion around online harms has focused on Content Moderation. This approach is time consuming, contentious, politically-fraught, and requires constant oversight, rule building, and attention. While it might seem like the right tool to reach for when content generates harm on the internet, it's helpful to back up and ask: what about the platform makes harmful content prevalent?

While the digital platforms themselves are not often directly to blame for these abuses, their design, algorithms, and policies often facilitate or exacerbate harm. By digging into why platforms are potential conduits for harm, this project explores how platforms could be tweaked by their owners, regulated by their governments, or petitioned by their users for redesigns that center harm aversion.

To get started, pick one of the harms below that you're most concerned with.

Alternatively, if you'd like to filter and sort the harms based on their characteristics, you can see the harms in the filter view.

Spam

Unsolicited solicitations with commercial or promotional intent.

Phishing

Using impersonation to trick a victim into revealing sensitive information.

Malware

Software built to gain unauthorized access to computers.

Harassment / Cyberbullying

Unwanted and repeated behavior that threatens, annoys, or intimidates a victim.

Scams

Commercial offerings that intentionally deceive their participants.

Multi Level Marketing

Sales organizations that grow primarily through an expansion in membership.

Self-Harm Amplification

The exacerbation and normalization of self-destructive behavior.

Non-consensual Explicit Imagery

Distribution of sexual imagery without the authorization of the person depicted.

Doxxing

Divulging someone's personal information, like location, in order to harass them.

Blackmail

Using threats of disclosure to coerce a victim.

Election Misinformation

Incorrect information about the mechanics of an election that can cause viewers to be disenfranchised.

Health Misinformation

Inaccurate claims, unsupported opinions or conspiracy theories about health that cause personal and public health harms.

Violent Extremism

Content that supports motivated acts of violence as means to achieve political, religious, or social objectives.

Child Sexual Abuse Imagery

Media that depicts or encourages the sexual exploitation of children.

Impersonation

Deceptively assuming the identity of a real person.

Coordinated Inauthentic Activity

Manipulating online platforms through coordinated creation of inaccurate data.

Grooming

The deliberate development of emotional connection with a minor as a means to manipulate and exploit them.

Unauthorized use, reproduction or distribution of works covered by intellectual property protections.

Resource Abuse

Creating generalized network, storage, or compute resources by misusing low-cost resources on the open internet.

Ad Fraud

Boosting advertising income through fraudulent user activity.

Addiction

Employing strategies to encourage users to engage with more frequency and investment than the user would prefer.

Location Misuse

Malicious use of geo-location data to stalk, harass, or harm.

Trolling

Posting disingenuous provocative messages to intentional elicit emotional reactions.

Hate Speech

Explicitly advocating violence, discrimination, or prejudice toward individuals or groups based on immutable characteristics.

Discrimination

Targeting or excluding individuals in online spaces based on a protected or immutable characteristic.

Sextortion

Using blackmail or threats to coerce a victim into providing sexual images or favors.

Online Shaming

Using the internet to publicly shame or ridicule.

Political Misinformation

Spreading false or misleading information to influence political attitudes and outcomes.

Identity Theft

Stealing credentials or other personal information, typically for financial impersonation.

Swatting

Making false reports to emergency services in order to bring a victim into confrontation with law enforcement.

Profile Building

Collecting and collating information about a user from across the internet in order to create a representational model of their interests and attitudes.

Ransomware

Malware which holds a user's data as a hostage until a ransom is paid.

Echo Chamber

The unconscious tendency for people to surround themselves with media that align with their existing views.

Filter Bubbles

Algorithmically driven content selection that prioritizes content that aligns with the user's prior ideas.

Catfishing

Intentionally deceiving others about who you are, typically on dating platforms.

Stalking

Persistent, unwanted surveillance of an individual, often causing fear and distress.

Money Laundering

Disguising the origins of illegally obtained funds to make them appear legitimate.

Account Hijacking

Unauthorized takeover of someone else's account.

Squatting

Collecting high value usernames for resale, ransom or confusion, rather than for use.

Manipulated Media / Deep Fakes

Inauthentic media that passes itself off as authentic.

Feedback bombing

Attempting to manipulate perception of an entity through large volumes of inauthentic feedback.

Account Resale

Selling stolen account credentials to enable users to assume new identities.

Promoting Illegal Activity

Advocating or facilitating actions that are explicitly prohibited by law.

Confirmation Bias

The tendency to seek and prioritize information that aligns with preexisting beliefs.

Unwelcome Sexual Advances

When a user initiates a sexual or romantic exchange with another outside of a reasonable context.

Incentivizing Dangerous Behavior

Creating dynamics in which dangerous activity is glorified and implicitly encouraged.

Artificial Intimacy

The creation of an a unidirectional emotional connection, often for manipulation.

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