YWCA video campaign hopes to combat online hate and violence

A new video campaign launched by YWCA Canada hopes to help combat online hate and violence.

Aline Nizigama is the CEO of YWCA Canada, she said certain communities experience online hate at higher proportions.

“This issue is heavily prevalent among young women and gender diverse youth, especially people between the ages of 16 and 30. It’s mostly Indigenous, Black, racialized people, gender diverse folks and people with disabilities,” said Nizigama in an interview with CTV’s Crystal Garret on Thursday. “We know that younger people experience online hate more because of social platforms and other online spaces and how these spaces have really ballooned especially with the pandemic, we know that younger people are not doing enough to protect themselves.”

Nizigama said YWCA Canada launched a new video campaign called ‘Block Hate’ to build the resilience against online hate.

“It is a series of animated videos. We wanted to design something that can speak directly to youth. We launched these tools on our social media where we know that youth are gathering. We wanted to make it more accessible,” she said.

Youth are not the only people not experiencing online hate said Nizigama. She said everyone should be improving their digital safety.

“We have not leveled up our digital safety enough to protect ourselves because we know that online hate can take many forms. Unfortunately a lot of us are venerable, so we need to do more to protect ourselves,” she said.

“Choose stronger passwords and keep them secure or change the passwords if you know you have been breached. Also, setup a multi factor authentication system for your accounts to make it harder for people to impersonate you. Review your platforms that you are engaging and their settings and privacy features and avoid oversharing on social media,” she added.