In March of last year, when Sarah Everard was murdered by a serving police officer, Wayne Couzens, I was part of the group that planned the vigil in Clapham Common. The police forbidding us to hold the event resulted in a court case which is still ongoing; and thrust me into the limelight as an activist. It started with a tweet, but has become my life’s work and driving force. In speaking out and campaigning for women’s safety, I’ve had some Twitter arguments and more dick pics than I can count sent to me; but it never seemed like more than I could handle. That changed last week.
On Tuesday night as I was getting ready to meet a friend for dinner, someone I rarely speak to messaged me to tell me that something weird was going on on Instagram. I clicked through and an account had been set up in my name, with my profile picture, but the username was ‘@photogirlukk’ not ‘@photogirluk’, which is my legitimate account.
There were no images on the grid, but when I clicked onto Stories I saw pictures from a recent holiday with stickers saying “link in bio”, and “I uploaded some naughty content” – then with close-up videos of a vagina with text saying “Join me now! And let’s get wild!”, and more pictures of me that were lifted from my real account.
The link in bio went to a “FanCentro” porn site where people were told to pay to have different levels of access to me and different sexual services.
I felt sick. I was horrified. And scared. Who would do this to me? What else might they do? How the hell can I stop it? I immediately reported the Instagram account and then messaged my girlfriends in a panic. One of my friends tried to calm me down, quipping: “I’d know right away this was fake; no way you would misspell ‘first’.” It didn’t really calm me down.
I didn’t know what to do and my phone was blowing up. Men I haven’t seen or spoken to for years and years – or that I have never spoken to at all – were all messaging me to tell me that the account had followed them and that it was porn.
And then the worst message came through. It was from my dad asking what the hell was going on and was I okay. Telling my dad that the vagina videos weren’t stolen from my phone and weren’t me was one of the worst exchanges I’ve ever had with him. And really, it didn’t matter that the videos weren’t actually of me. It felt like every person that would see them would think they had seen me naked and exposed.
I asked everyone who got in touch to report it, had a cry, and then searched for it again and it appeared to be down. I stomped into Oxford Circus, an hour walk, to burn off the rage and humiliation. It wasn’t videos of my vagina, but some people might think that it was. Who was behind it? How could I possibly find out? My barrister and friend Pippa Woodrow advised me to call the Met Police. If this was the beginning of a campaign, I needed the paper trail.
I naively thought it was down, when it was only down for me. I came out of dinner to tons and tons of concerned messages. And lists of people that I know in real life that had unknowingly followed it back, including friend’s boyfriends and a high school boyfriend. I was mortified, ashamed and embarrassed. I also knew I should not feel shame for being the victim, but it didn’t stop the feeling and the fear. Since it was still up, I figured the only way I could stop it was if enough people reported it. I tweeted to my 18k followers asking that they all report the account to have it removed. I then attempted sleep whilst actually just pressing refresh for hours and crying.
At 1am, a friend said it was finally over and it was down.
The next morning I emailed the porn site hosts with a takedown notice. Strangely, whoever created the site had actually ripped off the logo and pictures of FanCentro. The team at FanCentro were immediately responsive and explained that their legal team would be contacting the host server company with a take down notice and they would keep me updated. It was the only real help I got through the whole process.
Really, it didn’t matter that the videos weren’t actually of me. It felt like every person that would see them would think they had seen me naked and exposed.
The police informed me that the only crime they could pursue would be fraud, in using my face to get sign ups to the site. It didn’t count as revenge porn as the videos weren’t of my body. It didn’t count as Malicious Communications as they broadcast the videos and didn’t DM them. The fraud wouldn’t be listed as misogyny or with any sexual element because misogyny isn’t a hate crime in the UK. So even though they were weaponizing sexual content against me and implying it was me; there was no way for that to be reflected in the charges.
The officers said they would send Instagram a notice and investigate but 48 hours later I was told the case was being closed as there is no way that they would ever be able to find who did it, so I guess, why try?
My only recourse has been to start a petition to Instagram asking that they change their policy and freeze accounts immediately when reported for impersonation or porn and then do the moderation, rather than wait until enough people report it to act. I know that I am lucky it is even down now. It is only down because I talked to reporters and there was an article in the Times. Women have told me that the same thing has happened to them and the accounts have been up for months.
We deserve better from the platforms we use. As a victim, I deserve better. I am demanding it. I am meeting with representatives from Meta this week and will hand in the petition. By being public about what was done to me, I’ve taken some of the sting and shame out of it. I still feel fragile and scared of what else they might do to try to shut me up; but I also have much more empathy for the women that have been victims of revenge porn and impersonation.
Sign Jamie's petition to help make Instagram prioritise the victims of such impersonation here.
A Meta spokesperson said: “It’s against our rules to harass or impersonate people, and we’re sorry to hear that Jamie was targeted in this way. The account responsible was removed from Instagram.”
Meta also point GLAMOUR to their "clear policies against bullying and harassment which prohibit harmful behaviours, including repeatedly contacting someone in a way that's unwanted or sexually harassing and attacking people using sexually derogatory language and dehumanising comparisons - e.g. referring to women as property or objects. More information on this policy here.
Our policies complement tools we’ve built in our apps to prevent, stop and report bullying and harassment online. These tools empower people to manage unwanted or abusive interactions:
- DM controls: You can control who can message you - e.g. you can choose to only receive messages from people you follow.
- Hidden Words: allows you to filter DMs and comments that contain abusive terms, so you never have to see them.
- Blocking: On Instagram, when someone is blocked, we’ve made it harder for them to use another account to contact the person who has blocked them. Whenever someone decides to block someone on Instagram, they’ll have the option to block their account and pre-emptively block new accounts that person might create.
- Limits: our feature on Instagram that lets you hide DMs and comments from 2 groups of people: people who don’t follow you, and people who only followed you recently. Research shows most negative interactions come from these people."
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