BBC News reports that while Reddit has yet to block FakeApp porn from its channels, other websites have taken steps to block people from sharing deepfake videos. The chat service Discord shut down a group where deepfakes were being exchanged, saying that the videos violated its rules on non-consensual pornography.

These moves to block the spread of pornographic deepfakes are encouraging, because they are relatively rare examples of internet services taking decisive action to protect women from distress and abuse. All too often, we are presented with a vision of the internet as a kind of Wild West, where rules not only do not apply, but cannot possibly be enforced; where the harassment of women is par for the course.

The most obvious example of this is Twitter, which continues to be a place where women – not least women of colour, transgender women, women who subscribe to minority religions and disabled women – are routinely subjected to unmoderated abuse. Research conducted last summer by the Fawcett Society and Reclaim the Internet found that Twitter was failing to remove messages containing abuse, threats or hate speech, even when they clearly violated the website’s community standards (in addition, users who reported these tweets frequently received no response at all).

An Amnesty investigation, meanwhile, found that more than 25,000 abusive tweets were sent to women MPs over a six-month period in 2017 (half of which were directed at Diane Abbott, the UK’s first black woman MP). Twitter has insisted that it is strengthening its anti-abuse measures, but those who spend any time at all on the website will tell you that trolling and threats are still rampant.

Then there’s Facebook. The social media giant recently introduced new measures to tackle sexual harassment and revenge porn, but chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg openly acknowledges that the platform has not done enough to address abuse. Videos of women being attacked on the street are allowed to go viral, while black women who post about racial and gender politics have their content removed for “violating community standards”. The Guardian reports that Facebook is also currently facing a number of lawsuits from victims who say it hosted naked and compromising pictures of them. At least one teenage girl has settled out of court with the site, after naked images of her were posted on a so-called “shame page”.

Many of us now live much of our lives online, yet the internet can be a hazardous home for far too many women. Against a dark backdrop of tech company inaction – not to mention the fact that deepfakes are not currently covered by revenge porn laws – websites’ decisions to block deepfake videos should be seen a small spot of light. It makes the internet a fractionally more hospitable place for women, and that can only be a good thing.

Images: FakeApp / Rex Features

We should all celebrate the deletion of ‘Deepfake’ celebrity porn videos