The volunteer groups doing Meta’s job: Removing abuse from the internet
- Illustrations by Jirachaya Hongkaew
- Published
- 6 min read
Her stolen photos were used to sell pornography online, but police pushed her to reconcile with the perpetrator. A handful of volunteers now do what platforms and authorities often won’t.
One evening four years ago, Kam’s phone wouldn’t stop buzzing. A hundred new followers in an hour. It was a mundane week – her television programme hadn’t aired, she hadn’t posted much. The sudden spike made no sense.
The next day, Kam found out why. Ten pornographic films were circulating online, each bearing her name and photos. The videos promoted her Instagram handle, driving curious viewers straight to her account.
The 21-year-old television presenter, who asked to use an alias, hadn’t posted anything explicit. Someone had stolen her photos and used them as cover art for pornography of other women. The films spread through Google Drive links on Discord and VK, a platform popular for gaming and pornography amongst Thai users.
“Some colleagues asked if I had seen them, as if they believed it was me,” said Kam, who believes the clips still circulate online. “I told them it wasn’t me. But ever since then, I worry a lot about what others would think of me.”
Globally, sexual harassment has found a new stage: the internet. It can mean receiving intimate photos in chat from strangers or being sexually harassed in comments. Sometimes, private intimate content is posted on Facebook for blackmail or revenge, even by ex-partners.
About 17 percent of internet users in Thailand experienced sexual harassment in 2022, according to a survey by the Foundation of Women. Most victims are women and minors. The two survivors interviewed for this story responded within hours of HaRDstories posting a call for interviews on Facebook.
A small independent group called Stop Online Harm offers survivors services unavailable through official channels. But the organisation’s existence raises uncomfortable questions: Why are volunteers doing work that should fall to governments and billion-dollar tech companies?
A digital emergency room
Founded in 2024, Stop Online Harm operates what amounts to a 24/7 digital emergency room. Through donations and international support initially focused on Myanmar, the group offers free services to help survivors remove non-consensual nude images and videos from the internet.
The process centres on anonymity. Through live chat, users describe their situation without revealing their identity. Staff generate digital hash codes – unique identifiers created from explicit images – that serve as reference numbers. As a trusted civil society partner, Stop Online Harm passes these codes to Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and TikTok, which can delete content without survivors having to reshare traumatic images.
“The sexual harassment happening online seems to be ‘non-violent’ as it doesn’t touch your body, but the wounds it leaves can be significant,” said Saijai Liangpunsakul, founder of Stop Online Harm, which also provides one-on-one consulting with survivors.
The Harvard-trained tech policy expert argues this shouldn’t be volunteers’ work. “Social media platforms are supposed to connect people. But they have become tools for uncontrolled hatred and violence,” she said. “In the offline world, if someone follows you back home, everybody sees that as harassment. But online, someone can invade your privacy without leaving evidence.”
Stop Online Harm says it has handled more than 570 cases across Thai and Burmese communities since launching. The group also provides guidance on collecting digital evidence properly and uses forensic techniques to trace original sources of content.
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Saijai’s path to this work began far from Bangkok. Growing up in Thailand’s Deep South, she studied and worked across several countries, eventually specialising in tech policy. Her first project helped remote African communities use mobile applications to diagnose diseases like HIV and malaria. In 2014, the work expanded to Myanmar.
There, she witnessed how Facebook was weaponised. Myanmar’s military and radical Buddhist nationalists exploited the platform to spread hate speech and misinformation targeting Rohingya communities, providing justification for the state-backed campaign of murder, rape, and arson that drove the Muslim minority from the country in 2017.
Saijai joined research teams analysing these hate speech patterns to push for better content moderation. The experience shaped her view that what’s missing isn’t technology or laws, but systems guaranteeing user safety. “Can we have a safe digital world?” she asked herself. Her answer: yes, but “we need to build it ourselves”.
When the system fails
When Kam’s abuse happened four years ago, her options were limited. A professor suggested reporting the incident to the police. For more than a year, she burned fake pornography onto CDs and navigated a lengthy process with mostly male officers.
Kam said her friends traced digital evidence to an email account. When she brought this to police, she said they identified a young Thai man allegedly running a porn subscription service for 290 baht (about 9 USD), but urged reconciliation instead of prosecution. Officers told her, according to Kam, that the suspect was a recent graduate who “better not have a crime record to ruin his future.”
Manich faced a different tactic. The 60-year-old divorced man whose name has been changed, was blackmailed after a Facebook acquaintance he’d been messaging for weeks invited him to video call sex. The moment it ended, she demanded 50,000 baht (about 1,540 USD).
“All of a sudden, everything flipped. I was very scared, but luckily I reminded myself that sex is not something to be ashamed of,” he said. He chose to explain the situation publicly on Facebook rather than pay. The blackmailer disappeared after failing to manipulate him, but a few of his friends had already received the video.
“Most leaked intimate photos are usually taken by the victim themselves. But that does not make it any less a case of sextortion,” said Anan Eaksiripong of Thai Hotline, which has tackled digital sexual harassment since 2008.
The service is part of the Internet Foundation for the Development of Thailand, focusing on minors due to overwhelming cyberbullying cases. The organisation collaborates with cyber police to map abusers, sometimes uncovering syndicates. As online gender-based violence remains relatively new to Thai police, they host regular training for officers.
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Thailand’s laws haven’t caught up with the crime. Fake porn subscription services proliferate despite occasional arrests, and the country’s cyber crime and sexual harassment statutes don’t explicitly address technology-facilitated sexual harm, leaving survivors like Kam with limited legal recourse.
In July, the House of Representatives agreed to broaden the legal definition of sexual harassment to include online harassment, with a maximum penalty of three year imprisonment or a 60,000 baht fine (approximately 1,800 USD) or both. The amended law will also allow victims to ask for suspension or deletion of the explicit content from the internet, without filing a lawsuit. The legal amendment, proposed by the People’s Party, is currently under review by the upper house.
The platform accountability gap
Before Stop Online Harm launched, only minors could access content removal through Take It Down, a service run by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in partnership with Meta. Stop Online Harm has expanded access whilst reducing language barriers, now building awareness in Cambodia and Laos.
Meta, which operates Instagram and Facebook, says it won’t tolerate sexual exploitation. Yet harassment persists, particularly in private chats where platforms have limited visibility. The company did not respond to requests for comment.
Thailand, where more than 70 percent of the population uses social media, remains one of the world’s most socially connected nations. Whilst platforms became popular only in the past fifteen years, technology continues to accelerate. AI applications can now remove clothing from images in clicks, and incidents are rising sharply.
Both Stop Online Harm and Thai Hotline argue that whilst they can help individual cases, the responsibility shouldn’t rest with volunteers.
“If you manufacture cars for sale, you must make sure they’re safe, and if there are accidents from system errors, manufacturers have to be responsible,” said Saijai. “But for these online platforms, tech companies can design a car without brakes and let users crash without taking any responsibility.”
Saijai believes safe online spaces are possible, but she shouldn’t be building them if social media companies had installed proper safeguards from the start.
Stop Online Harm is putting together a report on online sexual harassment trends in the region, hoping to show tech companies and the public that this violence can be prevented. Preliminary findings from Myanmar are stark: in a survey of 1,200 people conducted between December 2024 and March 2025, 44 percent reported experiencing online sexual harm. Of those, 87 percent did not know where to find help, and three in ten experienced depression afterwards. The organisation is conducting similar research in Thailand.
“We are a very small team trying to seal the leak in the social media system,” said Saijai. “This is a huge human rights gap in the modern day.”
Nicha Wachpanich is a Bangkok-based journalist covering stories from a rights-based and human-interest perspective. She previously worked with a local environmental news agency under Thai Society of Environmental Journalists.
Jirachaya Hongkaew is a Bangkok based graphic designer and illustrator producing work for books and websites, including Bookscape Publishing House. Passionate in environmental communication, she uses her design to contribute to all living beings on earth.
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