Online safety and identity: navigating same-sex male social “dating” apps and networks

IF 1.8 Q1 LAW

Information & Communications Technology Law Pub Date : 2022-06-14 DOI:10.1080/13600834.2022.2088061

C. Giles, Christopher Ashford, K. Brown

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引用次数: 1

Abstract

ABSTRACT For gay, queer and bisexual men, and men who have sex with men (MSM), the presence of apps such as Grindr, Scruff, Tinder, Recon, and others have long represented a complex online ecosystem in which identities are formed and constructed in a space intensely governed by social, contractual, and – increasingly – criminal law backed regulation and norms. The publication of the UK Government's Online Safety Bill in late 2020 and revised Bill in March 2022 marked a further legal and policy intervention in regulating online harms to improve safety. It follows other interventions, notably the Criminal Justice and Court Act 2015, which criminalises intimate image sharing in cases where it is done without consent and intends to cause distress. This article draws on original focus group data to examine the navigation of these “Dating” Apps and Networks by their users from a novel perspective arguing that the current legal approach risks both over and under-legislating what is a complex and subtle online ecosystem. It focuses on the construction of identities – the characteristic proxies deployed, management of location-aware features, visuality, and images (re)shared. We seek to provide an essential counterpoint to existing and dominant narratives relating to online safety and identity regulation.

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在线安全和身份:浏览同性男性社交“约会”应用程序和网络

摘要对于同性恋、酷儿和双性恋男性以及男男性行为者（MSM）来说，Grindr、Scruff、Tinder、Recon等应用程序的存在长期以来代表了一个复杂的在线生态系统，在这个生态系统中，身份是在一个由社会、合同和越来越多的刑法支持的监管和规范严格控制的空间中形成和构建的。英国政府的《网络安全法案》于2020年底公布，并于2022年3月修订了该法案，这标志着在监管网络危害以提高安全方面进行了进一步的法律和政策干预。它遵循了其他干预措施，特别是2015年《刑事司法和法院法》，该法将未经同意并意图造成痛苦的亲密图像共享定为犯罪。本文利用原始的焦点小组数据，从一个新颖的角度审视了用户对这些“约会”应用程序和网络的导航，认为当前的法律方法有可能对复杂而微妙的在线生态系统进行过度立法和立法不足的风险。它专注于身份的构建——部署的特征代理、位置感知功能的管理、可视化和图像（重新）共享。我们试图为与网络安全和身份监管相关的现有和主导叙事提供一个重要的对比。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Information & Communications Technology Law LAW-

CiteScore

3.10

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： The last decade has seen the introduction of computers and information technology at many levels of human transaction. Information technology (IT) is now used for data collation, in daily commercial transactions like transfer of funds, conclusion of contract, and complex diagnostic purposes in fields such as law, medicine and transport. The use of IT has expanded rapidly with the introduction of multimedia and the Internet. Any new technology inevitably raises a number of questions ranging from the legal to the ethical and the social. Information & Communications Technology Law covers topics such as: the implications of IT for legal processes and legal decision-making and related ethical and social issues.