Report calls on tech firms to judge images by consent, not nudity

Social media platforms and law enforcement agencies are failing women by defining image-based abuse too narrowly — treating nudity as the threshold for harm rather than consent, according to a major new report by global gender justice organisation Chayn.

The findings, published following 64 interviews conducted between July 2025 and February 2026, include the account of a Pakistani university lecturer — identified only as Mahnoor to protect her privacy — whose clothed, private photographs were weaponised by her former husband to destroy her reputation and her relationship with her family. Chayn Founder and Report Author Hera Hussain concludes that image-based abuse represents a "systemic failure" by police, courts and technology companies alike.

When clothing is enough to cause harm

Mahnoor, 32, returned to her childhood home in Pakistan after leaving an abusive arranged marriage, only to find that her father and brothers refused to speak to her — and colleagues of many years would no longer meet her eye. Her former husband had accessed her WhatsApp account and private photo library before distributing images to male relatives, colleagues and acquaintances. The photographs — which showed her wearing Western clothing, baring her shoulders, or standing with friends — were never sexual or explicit by any conventional definition.

He also cropped group photographs to make it appear she was alone with a single man, insinuating an affair. The images were used, she says, to portray her as "a woman of bad character" — a label that, in many communities, can carry life-altering and sometimes fatal consequences. "I lost my voice," she told the BBC. "I no longer felt visible."

Her family had once sought her counsel. That, too, is gone. Mahnoor's ex-husband has since remarried, while she continues to live with the social and professional fallout.

Ayesha Omar: 'It damaged me psychologically'

Pakistani actress Ayesha Omar, who has worked in the country's film and television industry for more than two decades, says she experienced a similar violation long before sharing images online became routine. Photographs taken on a holiday in Thailand more than a decade ago — showing her at the beach in a one-piece swimsuit and shorts with a female friend — were taken from her laptop without her knowledge and posted online. "It was very damaging for my career," she said. "I lost ad campaigns. I lost some work stuff."

She added: "Because in my culture, you have to conform to a particular image, even if you're representing a brand or you're playing a character on TV. So it did damage me psychologically and emotionally a lot." Omar says the episode left her "hypervigilant", constantly scanning her surroundings for anyone who may be filming her.

What the research found

Chayn's report, titled Explicit Harms of Non-Explicit Images, draws on 64 interviews conducted between July 2025 and February 2026. Participants came from across every major region of Pakistan as well as diaspora communities in the UK, Canada, Germany, Malaysia, the UAE and Kuwait.

The research catalogues the types of images women feared having shared without consent: hair visible without a headscarf, fitted or Western clothing, a photograph beside a man who is not a family member, screenshots of fabricated conversations, or AI-generated images produced from a single photograph of a person's face. None contained nudity. All, the report argues, can be made to tell a damaging story.

Chayn's framework for defining harm rests on three tests: the damage done to the person, the intent behind the sharing, and the absence of consent. "The principle is respect, dignity, consent," Hussain says. "These are the things that matter."

Authorities and platforms turn women away

When Mahnoor reported her case to Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency — now operating as the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency — she was told the images fell outside its jurisdiction because they were not nude or sexually explicit. Her written complaint, seen by the BBC, was declined on those grounds.

She also approached her mobile network provider, but says she was informed that nothing could be done unless she could produce the SIM card registered to the offending account — a SIM her ex-husband had taken from her. A complaint submitted to WhatsApp's customer email address was, she says, rejected because the images did not breach the platform's rules. As she no longer holds the email exchange, the BBC was unable to verify the exact response.

WhatsApp declined to comment on Mahnoor's case, but a spokesperson directed the BBC to the platform's guidelines, which "outline what is and isn't allowed." The guidelines carry no specific policy on image-based abuse, stating only that WhatsApp deals with "abusive people" to prohibit "harmful conduct towards others," and that the platform is "not obligated to control the actions or information (including content) of our users or other third-parties."

WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, meaning it cannot proactively review images sent between users. In the context of sexually explicit and nude images, parent company Meta stated: "We are committed to making Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Threads safe places. We remove content that could contribute to a risk of harm to the physical security of persons."

The call for reform

Hussain argues that technology companies are asking the wrong questions. Reported images are typically assessed first by AI moderation systems trained primarily to detect nudity, she says, meaning a user may need to be highly persistent before a human moderator reviews a picture.

She also expressed concern about the reduction of human oversight as companies lean on cheaper automated tools and centralise regional expertise. In a disclosure to the US Senate Judiciary Committee, Snapchat's Chief Executive revealed that the platform's trust and safety headcount fell from a 2021 peak of just over 3,000 to approximately 2,226 in 2023 — a 27 per cent reduction.

Campaigners want the current approach reversed. At present, Hussain says, platforms investigate first and then remove content. She believes they should instead take images down within 24 hours pending review, and investigate afterwards. "What are you going to lose?" she asked. She pointed to a 2017 case in Pakistan in which three sisters were killed after a video of them singing and clapping at a wedding was shared online — three male relatives were subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment.

The reporting burden currently falls almost entirely on the victim, who must locate each image, view it repeatedly, and submit individual reports with no mechanism for bulk removal. "You go through all that retraumatisation," Hussain says, "and then you might not even get a response."

The wider impact on families

The report makes clear that the harm from a leaked image rarely stops with the woman it depicts. It spreads to her entire family — fathers unable to face work, sisters whose marriage prospects collapse, households watched, as the report puts it, "in a shameful manner." Honour is understood collectively in many of the communities studied, and the threat of collective shame functions as a tool of control.

For Mahnoor, the cost is counted in silence. Her daughter, now three and a half years old, has started to notice that the relatives upstairs no longer greet her mother. The images that stripped Mahnoor of her voice were, by any platform's existing definition, entirely harmless.

How other countries approach image rights

Some legal systems take a broader view of image-related harm. France has long recognised a "right to one's own image" under Article 9 of its Civil Code, granting every person — public figure or private citizen — an exclusive right over how their image is used, with exceptions for news and matters of genuine public interest. Even a minister photographed on holiday retains a right to privacy under this framework.

The UAE goes further, criminalising the photographing of individuals without their consent even in public spaces, with no broad public-interest exemption.

"Image-based abuse is bigger and wider than nudes," Hussain concluded, calling the current situation a "systemic failure." She added that police, courts and tech platforms "can all do so much better in supporting survivors," and urged anyone affected: "If you're experiencing image-abuse know that it is not your fault, you are not alone and there are organisations like Chayn that are here to support you."