ZOHOUR AL-MASHRQI

Tunis – Major technology companies feed on an economic model whose annual advertising revenues exceed $200 billion. Their algorithms are primarily based on the "attention economy," which turns women into mere digital commodities and a permanent source of financial profit.

Human rights and technical data indicate that content targeting women, or exploiting their images and bodies, achieves interaction and viewership rates 30% higher than normal content. This makes algorithms prioritize it in publication and spread to keep users on platforms as long as possible.

This financial exploitation appears at two levels. The first is direct commercial: surrounding women's personal data with intensive consumer advertising that relies on a sense of deficiency. The second lies in profiting from digital violence itself: algorithms promote smear campaigns, blackmail clips, and hate speech targeting activists and women because they are the most effective content for generating views and ads, turning victims' suffering and social downfall into profit figures flowing to platforms and abusive content creators alike.

In Tunisia, women's videos are exploited for profit, views, and digital harassment, prompting activists to warn of the danger of this reality that has commodified women.

How do algorithms and digital platforms turn women into "commodities" and tools for financial profit, and how does this technological bias intersect with violence against them?

Digital violence against women in Tunisia is no longer just isolated hostile behaviors or virtual practices separate from reality. It has become a structural phenomenon fueled by a complex economic and technological system based on the "commodification" of women and turning their suffering into numbers and commercial profits.

In a structural analysis of this crisis, sociologist, feminist, and human rights activist Najat Ararai revealed to our agency the other side of cyberspace, where the financial interests of major tech companies intersect with campaigns of demonization and defamation targeting women and activists, placing society before a human and legislative dilemma that goes beyond prevailing traditional approaches.

She stated that human rights readings, in parallel with global trends presented at the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women in New York, indicate that social media platforms and major tech groups do not operate as neutral spaces. They are investment entities governed by the "attention economy." In this economic system, women's data, images, private lives, and discourse directed against them become "commodities" bought and sold to generate the highest rates of interaction and views. Since the engineering of these algorithms and their software development has historically and practically been dominated by a single male vision, the technical design of platforms directly serves the spread of hate speech and misogyny, as it is the most capable content of sparking controversy and attracting profitable advertisements and funding.

She considered that this systematic commodification has opened the door to organized virtual groups and networks that exploit the mechanisms of algorithms to achieve direct financial gains by targeting women. Victims' images, private videos, or fabricated defamatory content against feminist activists, human rights defenders, journalists, and lawyers are used to ensure content rises in search engines and to profit from those views. This undeclared alliance between profit-seeking algorithms and violent groups has led to dangerous societal normalization of digital violence, turning the violation of women's dignity into "consumer content" that generates revenue for international platforms and local entities without any moral or legal deterrent.

She affirmed that on the other side of this digital market, women pay a heavy and devastating price on the ground. They face a circle of silence resulting from fear of society's judgment and a crisis of trust in legal protection mechanisms. When a victim decides to break the silence and complain to the relevant security authorities, she collides with procedural complexities imposed by the fluid nature of cybercrime. Perpetrators engage in blackmail and violence through fake and borrowed accounts, which they quickly delete or deactivate as soon as they learn of legal pursuit, leading to the erasure of digital evidence.

She reported that in the absence of sovereign agreements allowing the Tunisian state direct and immediate access to the data of major tech companies to identify the true identities of the aggressors, most cases end up being archived, reinforcing a safe environment for impunity where algorithms continue to circulate their profitable content.

Faced with this closed loop, the activist criticized the prevailing official approach, describing it as "patchwork" solutions that treat cybercrimes as isolated emergencies without understanding that the current technological system feeds on this violence. To dismantle this system based on the commodification of women, the association stressed the need to adopt a comprehensive national strategy based first on a legislative revolution that revises the Code of Criminal Procedure and laws regulating information systems crimes to ensure the tracking of fake accounts and the protection of digital evidence in a rapid and cross‑border manner.

She also called for the inclusion of "digital education" programs in the educational system to build preventive awareness among young people, especially girls, removing them from the circle of negative targeting and establishing a societal culture that refuses to turn women's dignity into a commodity in technology markets.

The speaker stressed that there are no "magic solutions" to confront digital violence and restructure algorithms, emphasizing the need for serious and systematic international action that imposes a limit on violence and protects the right to freedom of expression without being subjected to violations.

She believes that technology outpaces legal procedures. Companies often invent legal mechanisms to hide the identity of those responsible for this violence, making treatment require genuine international political will and cooperation from all parties to protect the values and principles of society, which are threatened with disintegration.

Activists in Tunisia stress the importance of digital awareness and digital citizenship education as fundamental pillars to confront the challenges posed by cyberspace.