Enforcing women’s rights online: an analysis of Instagram and X’s compliance with EU standards on Cyberviolence against women.

Technology is progressively becoming inescapable in our everyday life. The internet, once envisioned as a space of equality and freedom, has instead mirrored societal biases, amplifying inequalities and violence that particularly affects women in every aspect of their lives, both online and offline. Perpetrated predominantly on social media platforms, these companies often prioritize legal protection and profit maximization, pretending to protect free speech, rather than implementing effective regulations to address the issue. In a society growingly reliant on digital technologies, cyber violence against women raises urgent concerns regarding platform accountability in addressing online harm. Drawing on a theoretical framework combining technofeminism, digital constitutionalism and platform governance theories, this thesis seeks to analyse if social media platform enforcement aligns with EU regulations and human rights standards obligations in combating cyber violence against women. For this purpose, this thesis will follow a comparative analysis of European legal obligations and corporate policies of Instagram and X by assessing compliance with EU’ Digital Services Act and the recent Directive 2024/1385 on Violence Against Women, informing a diverse understanding of enforcement practices in the region. Findings shall highlight the existing gaps between platforms' obligations in addressing cyber violence against women and current EU regulations to tackle corporate responsibility in preventing harm. These results shall inform us on the need to rethink a more effective approach to regulate platforms & make them accountable to European standards of human rights.