Co-Designing Safer Social Media: Design and Policy Recommendations for Women and Gender-Diverse Users in Australia

Le résumé fourni par la source

We present findings from a series of co-design studies conducted in collaboration with RMIT University and the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN), examining how social media platforms can better support the safety of women and gender-diverse users in Australia. The study engaged 75 participants across multiple co-design workshops, complemented by consultations with 21 experts in platform safety, digital policy, moderation, and technology design. Grounded in lived experiences, this work examined how existing social media safety features perform in practice and identified safer, more effective alternatives envisioned by users. The findings reinforce that online safety is fundamental to equitable participation in digital life. Women and gender-diverse people disproportionately experience technology-facilitated abuse, including harassment, non-consensual image sharing, impersonation, and identity-based attacks. These harms impact mental health, professional visibility, and everyday communication. Despite increasing recognition of these challenges, current platform safety mechanisms remain reactive, opaque, and burdensome, often requiring users to manage harm with limited transparency or meaningful recourse. In response, this study advances six design and policy recommendations developed through participatory engagement and refined through expert input. These include making reporting systems more transparent, trackable, and responsive to severity, enabling users to better understand and navigate outcomes. The recommendations also propose embedding friction, consent, and evidence-preserving mechanisms into content sharing workflows to prevent harm before it occurs. Further, they call for stronger account authenticity and accountability measures, alongside more context-sensitive detection and flagging systems capable of identifying nuanced and identity-based abuse. The study also highlights the need to better detect and respond to repeat and coordinated patterns of harm, and to provide users with timely, contextual, and responsible safety guidance. Together, these recommendations outline a Safety by Design approach that centres the needs of those most affected, offering actionable pathways for platforms to more effectively prevent, detect, and respond to online

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