Not Just Nudes: Image-Based Abuse in Pakistan

By Ramma Shahid Cheema

A photograph of a woman who normally covers her hair without a hijab, or a video of her dancing at a wedding. These are not sexually explicit by any platform's definition. Yet when these images are shared without consent and recontextualized, they can be used to blackmail, threaten, or shame her, causing grave harm, up to and including honor killing.

The complexities of non-nude image and video-based abuse in Pakistan are often misunderstood and diminished by national regulatory authorities such as Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), and by major tech platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp that millions of Pakistani women use every day. 

As part of Chayn's new report, "Explicit Harms of Non-Explicit Images: Defining Image-Based Abuse in Pakistan and the Diaspora," in which I assisted with research and interviews, I came to understand how deeply nuances of culture and identity shape women's relationship with technology, and how badly the systems designed to protect them have failed to account for this.

Over the past several months, we interviewed more than 60 Pakistani women from cities and villages across Pakistan and the diaspora. They were students, mothers, teachers, activists, celebrities, sex workers and entrepreneurs. They spoke Urdu, Punjabi, Pashto, Siraiki, Balochi and English. The report finds that the images weaponised against them often contain no nudity at all, and that the harm lies not in what an image shows but in whether a woman consented to its being shared, a reality not considered by the tech companies based in the West. Many of these images  that do not fall under platforms’ no-nudity policies can still cause serious harm and have devastating consequences for women’s lives. This report provides evidence for experiences many communities have long understood.

I was born in Lahore, and grew up in both rural and urban settings. Some of the experiences shared by the survivors of image based abuse were mine, too. Always calculating what to wear, where to go, who to be photographed with, and later making sure the images being shared on social media are safe even if shared on private accounts. These considerations may not cross a woman’s mind in the Western world, but weigh heavy on ours.  

One thing became very clear to me: trust in these systems is deeply fractured. I share that distrust. I found myself questioning not only whether existing systems can respond to image-based abuse, but whether they were ever designed to recognize the realities of women. When the rules only see an image as harmful if it shows skin, the woman whose reputation is destroyed by a photograph of her dancing at a wedding is not in scope.

Anthropologists call this epistemic violence, the harm done not by what is said, but by what a dominant system refuses to recognize. The platforms that now shape how billions of people communicate, report harm, and seek safety were built in one cultural context and exported to the world carrying with them assumptions about what harm looks like, what bodies mean, and whose experiences count. 

Pakistan is firmly embedded in the digital world. Internet use has grown from 17% of the population in 2019 to 57% in 2025. Yet many women continue to navigate online spaces cautiously using pseudonyms, restricting their visibility, carefully curating what they share because the consequences of being targeted feel very real. 

Our research showed that what may seem unproblematic in a Western framework can have grave consequences for women in Pakistan, but that tech platforms are designed to identify content like nudity, not context. So when a woman tries to report this kind of abuse, she finds herself without a clear pathway, because her experience doesn't fit the categories the system was built to recognize.

For many women in Pakistan, reporting to the police is the last resort. They fear that seeking help could expose their identity or intensify the harm they are trying to escape. In a context where honor is treated as something a whole family or community holds collectively, the consequences of disclosure are enormous. Some survivors we interviewed reported suffering in silence, feeling they have no one safe to turn to. They live with serious mental health consequences: insomnia, anxiety, depression, suicidal crisis. Some also withdraw socially, disappearing from online life altogether.

Elsewhere, policies are beginning to shift. For example, France has placed consent at the center of how image-based abuse is defined, and it treats consent as tied to context. Agreeing to be photographed is not the same as agreeing for it to be shared, and consent is not a single, permanent yes. A woman may willingly share a photograph with her friends without agreeing for it to be shared widely or weaponized against her, and she should be able to withdraw consent whenever she chooses.

France shows a consent-based approach can work. Below, I summarise some of the report's recommendations for how tech companies can also move policies and enforcement toward consent over content. For a full list of recommendations for tech companies and policymakers, see the full report. 

Recommendations for tech companies

1. Shift from defining image-based abuse as only sexual or nude content to a consent-based framework where removal requests based on lack of consent are granted.
2. Ensure moderation teams are culturally informed, with additional training on intersecting experiences such as sexual orientation, religion, gender identity, and caste.
3. When a user attempts to post a photo online, introduce a prompt asking them to confirm that they have obtained consent from all identifiable people in the image.
4. Suspend reported images while a decision is made about whether they should be removed.
5. Allow third-party reporting, including for WhatsApp and Instagram Stories.
6. Create flexible reporting mechanisms that allow people to describe their own experiences and requested remedies rather than forcing reports into rigid categories.
7. Liaise with law enforcement agencies at the request of survivors, including preserving evidence that content existed even if later removed.

The State of the Open Internet with Mallory Knodel: Elixir Wizards Podcast

IX's Mallory Knodel, executive director of the Social Web Foundation, joins Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond on the Elixir Wizards podcast to talk about internet governance, open standards, and the future of the social web. Mallory shares how her work as an activist, systems administrator, and public interest technologist led her into the working groups that shape how the internet functions, including the IETF, W3C, ICANN, and ITU.

The conversation explores how the internet shifted from open protocols toward a handful of dominant platforms, and what that centralization means for users, developers, and independent service providers. Mallory explains how protocol-level decisions affect everything from email deliverability to identity, data portability, trust and safety, and the ability to move between platforms. They also discuss the Social Web Foundation, ActivityPub, the Fediverse, and building a more multipolar social web.

Mallory also looks at what happens when AI agents, automated accounts, and algorithmic feeds enter open social ecosystems, and shares her perspective on privacy, usability, encrypted messaging, and designing technology around user needs rather than engagement alone.

Listen on Spotify | Apple Podcasts or below on YouTube!

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