As the Trump administration rolls back women’s rights and emboldens online misogynists, women are turning to alternative digital spaces like Communia to protect their safety, build community and reclaim control online.
President Trump signed the “big, beautiful” reconciliation bill into law on July 4 that mirrors the administration’s goals to significantly roll back civil rights in the United States over the next three years. However, there are small pockets where advocates have been able to move the needle in favor of public safety. In May, the Take It Down Act went into effect. Signed into law by President Trump, the law criminalizes the distribution of non-consensual intimate images, including AI deepfakes.
“Even though there is probably going to be a huge rollback of women’s rights and marginalized people’s rights in the United States over the next couple years, there is this weird pocket of online safety that is continuing to potentially evolve,” says Olivia DeRamus, the founder and CEO of Communia, a social networking app and self development platform made for women.
However, the government is still lacking when it comes to holding social media platforms that often promote violent sexual content accountable.
“I unfortunately became one of the many women in the United States who experience a sexual assault, particularly while on college campuses,” DeRamus told Ms. “My abuser ultimately ended up suing me for reporting him to the school. So through that whole horrific process, I tried to turn to social media to find support and information and resources that I wasn’t lucky enough to have in real life.”
DeRamus, who founded Communia just after she graduated from Richmond American University London in 2019, said that the social networking app has become a place for women to take refuge from the dramatic uptick in online harassment following the 2024 election and the inauguration.
“When my assault happened, I hadn’t formed really strong friend groups. I was a freshman in college, so I didn’t necessarily have that built-in friend group that some people but many women also don’t have, even though we all assume that that’s the case.”
And studies show that DeRamus isn’t alone in her experience: Young women aged 18 to 24 are already at an elevated risk for sexual assault. On top of this, 50 percent of all college sexual assaults happen during the Red Zone, a name given to describe the start of the fall semester and Thanksgiving break before students have been given the time to develop strong bonds with their peers.
As a result, DeRamus turned to social media for connection. “Instead I found harassment, abuse— you know, cultures of competition and all of the ills of social media.”
Online Harassment and the 2024 Election
Following the 2024 election and the presidential inauguration, women faced a dramatic increase in online harassment. Across X, TikTok, Facebook and other social platforms, statements calling for the repeal of the 19th Amendment resurfaced and increased by 633 percent compared to the previous week. Increasingly jarring, “Your body, my choice,” became a trending phrase on Facebook and grew by over 4600 percent on X.
“We especially saw the effects of the election and the attitude towards women … being revealed more clearly, amplified by Mark Zuckerberg coming out and saying that workplaces have to be more masculine. … Meta, saying that women can now be called household objects on their platforms. We even saw Meta’s oversight board say that videos that are derogatory towards trans women and girls are allowed on their platforms by the argument of freedom of speech, which is inherently flawed in and of itself.”
To make matters worse, platforms like Meta have since rolled back their already minimal trust and safety procedures, says DeRamus.
“There are so many obvious mistakes mainstream tech companies are making, and honestly saying that they’re ‘a mistake’ is pretty charitable of me. They’re intentional choices that these tech companies are making.
“It shouldn’t be a really huge ask to … take off the accounts that are threatening women with violence, that are harassing women, telling women, young girls to kill themselves.”
DeRamus noted that there are numerous state-level cases against Meta right now, even from more conservative states like Texas. And a federal case against Meta, the largest in the company’s history, began in April. The case argues that Meta broke competition laws when it acquired Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014.
“Right now we’re having a ton of women downloading [Communia] from red states and self identifying as blue dots and really looking for safe spaces to have conversations where they feel more and more unable to express their political beliefs where they live.”
However, DeRamus says that she doesn’t necessarily encourage conversations about reproductive rights on Communia, although it does happen, because no social media platform can guarantee the safety of its users and there is nothing the networking app can do if they are subpoenaed for reproductive rights information.
“It’s an interesting and very tough time to be running a platform like this, and certainly a lot of the conversations on Communia are around seeking refuge from the really abusive political landscape and everything that’s happening when it comes to marginalized people’s rights.”
Carving Out Online Spaces for Women
While social media is becoming an increasingly dangerous place that fosters extremes, especially for young men, women remain tech’s largest demographic making the majority of social media users at 51 percent; and studies show, they’re not happy with the atmosphere being fostered online.
“Tech assumes that they have a captive audience. That’s not the case,” says DeRamus.
In Communia’s 2023 study that surveyed 2000 women, 40 percent of Gen Z and millennial women were intending to leave social media due to well-being and safety concerns.
“[Social networking apps’] algorithms create extreme cycles of emotion. There are no circuit breakers if, let’s say, a young man gets exposed to a misogynistic piece of content for the first time and he engages with it at all, they will immediately—whether it’s TikTok or a Meta platform or even X—feed that person more and more extreme content to keep them on the app so their advertising dollars get bigger,” says DeRamus.
In response, DeRamus noted that circuit breakers and an algorithm that doesn’t foster extremes and instead inserts other points of view can all help foster healthier environments online. However this becomes difficult when many platforms, like Meta, are still bottlenecked at the top. This means that decisions surrounding social media are coming from the billionaires that own the platforms who have a specific political agenda that is in line with the Trump administration.
How Communia Challenges Traditional Platforms
Communia requires everyone to verify their identity before they can communicate with other users on the platform.
“Everyone told us that we were crazy when we decided to do that. That is definitely one of our users favorite features. It really empowers people to not feel that they have to use anonymous posting, even though that is available,” says DeRamus.
The app also includes social journaling, which allows for more nuanced conversations to happen publicly and with close friends. Additionally, Communia is starting work on a more advanced emotional health algorithm to improve people’s emotional health rather than harming it. The app also includes private journaling, mood tracking and, eventually, the ability to opt in to mood-improving algorithms.
Communia has also launched local journals, allowing people to connect within their area. This includes a ‘Blue Dot’ journal for women feeling isolated in red states, providing them with a community they might feel they lack within the borders of their own state.
“It’s amazing what happens and how people behave when you’re strong in your policies,” says DeRamus, “and a lot of the problems on other platforms is that people know that they can get away with doing things like, threatening sexual violence to women.”
Great Job Livia Follet & the Team @ Ms. Magazine Source link for sharing this story.
