AN ONLINE LECTURE focused on violence against women during the War of Independence had to be shut down after several individuals disrupted the event by shouting sexist and racist abuse and sharing pornographic content.

Dr Mary McAuliffe, Director of the Gender Studies Programme at UCD, was around twenty minutes into her lecture yesterday evening when what she described as “a coordinated attack” began.

“I had just finished a section describing an attack in Clare in 1920; an attempted sexual assault of a woman by a members of the Black and Tans,” she told The Journal.

Suddenly there were these horrific pornographic images appearing and in the Zoom chat there were misogynistic and racist messages, there were voices saying ‘get off the screen, bitch’ and using the c-word, screaming and shouting.

Dr McAuliffe said it appeared as though some of the people who disrupted the event were naked.

“There were definitely one or two where you could see sex acts, I don’t know whether they were videos or pictures. They were also drawing penises on my slides,” she said.

The lecture was hosted by the Kilrush and District Historical Society and had a particular focus on case studies from Co Clare. More than 60 people joined the event.

Dr McAuliffe said the moderators attempted to stop this activity, but as accounts were being removed others were joining.

“They just had to shut it down, there were around ten people doing it and then it seemed like it went up to 20,” she said.

“I feel so bad for all of the attendees and particularly the older ones, I could see people were shocked. I was very upset by it, it did feel like a personalised attack.”

Coordination through Twitter

She said one of the attendees later discovered a Twitter account that had shared the Zoom link to the event. This account appears to be part of a ‘zoom codes’ community, sharing links to meetings and events so they can be disrupted in a practice known as zoomboming.

The account has tweeted out links to a number of other Zoom meetings, labelling them with terms such as ‘black community meeting’, ‘old people conversation’, ‘75 Asian people’, ‘meeting of the blind’, ‘disabled meeting’ and ‘black women obesity fat meeting’.

The account highlighted meetings which did not have a waiting room, meaning those joining would be instantly added to the event without having to be approved by an administrator.

In one instance the account linked to a ‘kids meeting’ on Zoom, while another post linked to a Zoom meeting which the user said was ‘full of kids’.

Another account, which appears to belong to the same user, also shares Zoom links in a similar manner, encouraging followers to join. It has screenshots of the reactions of some of the participants in meetings that were targeted.

The Journal contacted Twitter about three accounts in total linked to this kind of activity.

A spokesperson confirmed Twitter has now “permanently suspended the referenced accounts for violating our abusive behaviour and ban evasion policies”.

“Protecting the health of the public conversation on Twitter is a top priority for us and we will continue to take action on content that violates the Twitter Rules,” they said.

In a similar incident last month, an online vigil in memory of murdered primary school teacher Ashling Murphy was crashed by a man who exposed himself and appeared to masturbate. 

“I know this isn’t the first time they targeted women specifically, these zoombombing trolls target women, the LGBT community, people with disabilities and marginalised communities,” Dr McAuliffe said.

“In the last few weeks from talking to feminist colleagues, they’ve had a few meeting disrupted as well with pornography, misogyny and racism, it’s just horrific.

“This was all men doing this [at last night's event], it was male bodies and all male voices, so it was male violence and it’s not just the women impacted by it, it’s the male attendees too. It harms everybody.”

Responsibility of tech companies

Dr McAuliffe called on tech companies to do more to prevent this kind of abuse, particularly when it moves from one platform to another – in this case from Twitter to Zoom.

“While they put in place some security protocols for their own software they’re not really talking to each other, we’re not seeing it when we have the use of different social media platforms to commit violence against women and marginalised communities,” she said.

In response to a query from The Journal, a spokesperson for Zoom said:

“We have been deeply upset to hear about these types of incidents, and Zoom strongly condemns such behaviour. We take meeting disruptions extremely seriously and, where appropriate, we work closely with law enforcement authorities.”

The spokesperson encouraged users to report these kinds of incidents to Zoom and to police. 

“We have a number of default settings and features to help hosts more easily access in-meeting security controls, including controlling screen sharing, removing and reporting participants, and locking meetings, among other actions,” they said.

“We have also been educating users on security best practices for setting up their meetings, including recommending that users avoid sharing private meeting links and passwords publicly on websites, social media, or other public forums, and encouraging anyone hosting large-scale or public events to utilise Zoom’s webinar solution.”