Online Safety Commission offers hope, but victims want process simplified

SINGAPORE – Content creator Renae Cheng, 31, has spent the past two years dealing with AI-generated videos on TikTok of her being kissed and groped by a stranger.

The overseas-based harasser, who created the deepfake video, also bombarded her with rape and death threats after she refused to share an acquaintance’s contact details.

Cheng, who is married with an 11-month-old daughter, frequently has to field awkward questions from confused relatives about the videos. “Some of them are upset and may not understand that the videos are fake,” said Cheng.

She had reported the videos to TikTok multiple times, but was told that the content did not breach the platform’s community guidelines.

The videos remain online, but Cheng hopes they will be deleted soon. She will be taking her case to the Online Safety Commission (OSC), which started operations on June 29.

The commission offers an alternative for those who encounter inadequate, delayed or unhelpful responses from social media platforms over harms encountered online.

Victims The Straits Times spoke to expressed relief that there is now a dedicated agency to mandate content takedowns and hold wrongdoers accountable on their behalf.

But they also suggested some improvements to the process.

“With a specific commission dedicated to tackling online harms, hopefully social media platforms will treat complaints more seriously,” said Cheng.

The OSC is backed by the newly enacted Online Safety (Relief and Accountability) Act, or OSRAA, allowing it to impose penalties if its directions to content creators, forum administrators and platforms for content takedowns or account restrictions are not followed.

For a start, the OSC is tackling five of the most prevalent and serious online harms: intimate image abuse, image-based child abuse, doxxing, online harassment, and online stalking.

Victims of intimate image and image-based child abuse and doxxing can submit reports to OSC immediately, while victims of online harassment or stalking must first report their case to the tech platforms and wait 24 hours before escalating to the OSC.

Victims suggested several improvements to the process, especially in reporting harms.

Many forms to fill

Some victims hope for more streamlined reporting with reduced form-filling.

Currently, victims need to fill up separate forms over the same offending content for different outcomes – content takedown, seeking compensation, and identifying an anonymous perpetrator.

Reporting to multiple tech platforms that carry the same content also requires filling up separate forms. The OSC website lists 20 platforms, all of which have different reporting formats.

If victims want the offence to be investigated, they need to make a separate police report by filling up yet another form on the Singapore Police Force’s website.

Each process requires victims to provide similar accounts of what happened and repeatedly submit the same evidence.

While Anna K, 25, appreciates having an agency represent her, she finds the complex form-filling process daunting.

“There are so many different processes and forms,” said the 25-year-old, who works in the education sector.

“If a victim has 10 platforms to deal with, they’re basically forced to become a lawyer within a week. That’s just crazy.”

A freelancer in her 30s, who wanted to be known as Brenda Tan, said she wishes the reporting process can be streamlined across the police, OSC and tech platforms, so victims need to fill up forms only once.

“It will be more useful if I can just submit my account once and tick checkboxes to indicate which reporting routes I want it filed under,” she said.

Tan, who had been threatened with AI-generated sexually explicit images in her likeness, said: “How many times do I need to be retraumatised?”

How Kay Lii, chief executive officer of non-profit organisation SG Her Empowerment, agrees with her view. She said: “The responsibility of filling a form – even a well-designed form – is still on the survivor. The system will be stronger if reporting continues to be made simpler, easier to find, and supported by clear guidance at every step.”

More assurance with specified timelines

Several online harms victims suggested that the OSC include an estimated response time in its acknowledgement notice for submitted reports, saying it would provide assurance during an intensely stressful period.

The OSC had said it would handle reports as quickly as possible, without specifying any timeframe.

A victim who wanted to be known as Carol Lee, 29, said a timeline would help manage expectations and ease anxiety.

Uncertainty over how long a case takes to conclude is agonising because illicit content can be quickly saved, shared and reposted across multiple sites, forcing victims into a never-ending cycle of reporting new links as they emerge. Without knowing when help will arrive, many fear the harm will continue to snowball.

“If we can get timely updates, at least we know when to expect a conclusion,” said Lee, whose ex-boyfriend secretly recorded her showering in 2020. She lives in fear that her nude images may one day surface online.

Low-cost legal help needed

Many victims welcome an avenue under the OSRAA to seek compensation from perpetrators, administrators of group chats, and platforms. But they also voiced their fears over pursuing civil action, intimidated by the complexity of the legal process and the possibility that legal fees would balloon.

They are also unsure if the recoverable damage – set at a baseline of $5,000 – for each intimate image or recording shared without their consent is worth their time and money to pursue.

“The $5,000 may not even cover my legal fees, or the trauma of having to relive the experience when testifying about the case,” said Tan.

Chew Han Ei, an adjunct senior research fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies, said victims need more practical guidance on how the law may apply to their situation and access to low-cost legal help.

Guidance could come in the form of sample scenarios that walk victims through hypothetical cases, explaining what remedies may be available, which applications to file, and what evidence they need to gather. These could be made available on the OSC website.

“The civil remedies process should feel less like filing a court case from scratch and more like a supported pathway from harm to remedy. Victims should not have to become amateur lawyers while managing trauma,” said Chew.

Help for those caught in ambiguous situations

Victims also hope for assurance that they will not be turned away, even if their report might not strictly fit the description of harms specified on the OSC website.

“It is overwhelming having to decide by myself which category of harm my situation falls under,” said Anna. She hopes that the OSC has a no-wrong-door policy.

Sharing her own encounter in 2023 that involved several sexually explicit videos falsely linked to her name and social media accounts, she is uncertain where her case might fit according to existing definitions.

Specifically, she is uncertain if intimate image abuse or online harassment applies to her situation, since she merely resembles the woman seen in the explicit videos posted by the perpetrator.

Intimate image abuse is defined as the sharing of intimate images or recordings of a victim without the victim’s consent.

Online harassment refers to a perpetrator sharing threatening, abusive, insulting, sexual, or indecent material about a victim, or sending such material to the victim online.

She was nevertheless traumatised by the offending content’s spread on social media, file-sharing and pornographic sites, and argued that the incident constitutes an online harm. Many attempts made to get the platforms to remove the content were unsuccessful.

She eventually got Google to delink her name from the offending content, but described the process as overwhelming as the material had spread across multiple platforms.

Some victims wondered whether examples of online harms on the OSC website should be taken as advice on how to deal with perpetrators.

Fashion and art photographer Zhang Jingna pointed to three examples of online stalking provided by the OSC that involve victims communicating with their stalkers, such as to stop the harassment, before filing a report.

“Based on some professional materials I read on stalking, victims are recommended not to engage, because even telling a person to stop could be seen as giving them the attention they want, and could contribute to escalating a dangerous situation,” said the 38-year-old, who was doxxed and verbally abused online during a two-year court trial against Luxembourg artist Jeff Dieschburg.

He had won a contest with a painting that infringed upon the copyright of a photo that Zhang had taken of a South Korean model for an issue of Harper’s Bazaar magazine. The courts ruled in favour of Zhang.

“It’s unclear to me if the OSC is giving specific instructions requiring victims to first engage a stalker and tell them to stop before they can file a report or not,” said Zhang.

Limited jurisdiction

While the OSC is now a key port-of-call for victims, there are also practical limits to what it can do for victims.

“When harmful content migrates to encrypted messaging or to sites hosted offshore with no Singapore nexus, there are limitations to what the OSC can do,” said Josh Lee Kok Thong, managing director (Asia-Pacific) at the Future of Privacy Forum, and external research fellow at SMU Centre for Digital Law.

“This is not an issue unique to the OSC or to Singapore, but rather the structural reality of cross-border harms.”

This is true for former journalist Malavika Menon, who suffered the brunt of racial slurs, rape threats, and doxxing from anonymous netizens on an online forum in 2022. Though she filed a police report, she was told that not much could be done as the site’s domain was registered overseas.

Still, while the OSC might not be able to ensure that objectionable content is scrubbed clean from the internet entirely, it has powers to significantly reduce the reach and accessibility of harmful content in Singapore, said Lee.

These include issuing orders to platforms and administrators to ensure that harmful material cannot be accessed by people in Singapore, for internet service providers to block access to a group page or website by persons in Singapore, and for app distribution service providers to block downloads of an app by those in Singapore.

This can make a substantial difference to a victim’s life and mental health, said 31-year-old Menon, who added that she is considering making a report to the OSC.

“I’m cautious about how effective it can be against the particular platform where I face harm – but if it can be taken down four years after I first came across it, it would truly give me a new sense of freedom,” said the international development consultant, adding that she does not want potential employers, colleagues and friends to have to come across such content.

“If it is finally gone, I can rest assured that what they come across are my achievements and positive acknowledgements in life, rather than a thoughtless discussion where I was treated with violent rhetoric and seen as less than human.”