The Facebook group my wife was closed. The decision came from Meta, after the Reports of users and newspapers. My wife was a Facebook group in which users apparently, almost all men, shared photos of their companions. In fact it was a archive of women’s images published without consent. It is not possible to understand with certainty where they came from. If they were really the companions of users, shots from other groups, images stolen from the sea or still taken from other profiles.
However, the discussion remained open, also because on social media it is not difficult Find similar spaces. Groups, chats or channels in which photos of women without consent are published. Sometimes, like the case of my wifeare shares that have as its objective that of Sexualize the body portrayed in the photo. In other cases, on the other hand, they are shared images lightly, as in groups for photomontages, but still without consent.
We talked about it with Guido Scorzalawyer and member of the Guarantor for the protection of personal data. Scorza explained that in principle users who shared this data can be sanctioned but the way to do so is not that easy.
My wife disappeared: because the Facebook group with photos without consent is no longer reachable
The anomaly of the facebook group my wife
According to Scorza the case of Facebook group my wife It was an exception, probably due to the choice of users to move in the Gray areas of the Meta policies: “This group was an anomaly. I followed the case, even if in fact we did not intervene. I guess the group managed to move, even for several years, because it never passed the border of the sexually explicit. There were not only nude photos, so to speak, that instead they would take a block from the algorithm”.
Violations committed by users who have published materials on the group
Second Guido Scorzain principle, it is possible to sanction who Publish photographs without the consent of the person portrayed: “For us it is an unauthorized diffusion, a choice that violates privacy and the protection of personal data”. However, the route to get to a penalty, at least on the road of the guarantor, it is more complex.
First of all, the passage is not automatic: “If we were to receive the complaint of one of the women exposed then we could open a procedure against the user who spread the image”. There is no fixed penalty: “The sanction is proportionate to property skills. There is no table but it is decided by case in case. Of course, Let’s not talk about light sanctions. The aim is to prevent the crime from being replicated. “
The problem the historian remains. Generally the guarantor moves above all when there are violations that are made by companies or companies that do not correctly follow the indications on the management of personal data. As Scorza explains, the number of cases relating to individual citizens who have been taken into consideration is “statistically not very relevant”.
