A recent investigation by 404 Media revealed that more than 24,000 deepfake porn images of women were being created and shared every month on Telegram, many without the subjects even knowing. The creators? Often anonymous. The victims? Everyday women whose photos were scraped from the internet and manipulated without consent. Telegram did nothing. The groups keep growing, the scale is industrial and the damage is intimate and lasting.
The accounts may vanish, but the damage doesn’t. The images stay burned in your brain. The fear lingers and the humiliation, even if unearned, lives in your bones.
And yet, amidst all this; the anxiety, the fear, the silence, something else has happened too. A wave of solidarity. The messages I’ve received from other women: friends, strangers, colleagues, fellow mothers have moved me beyond words. They’ve said: “I believe you.” They’ve said: “This happened to me too.” They’ve said: “I’m so sorry. We are with you.”
That’s what keeps me going. The knowledge that I am not alone. That none of us are. That in the face of a machine designed to humiliate us into silence, we are still speaking, still fighting, still standing with one another.
I’m lucky in many ways. I have a voice. I can write this piece and speak out without fear of losing everything. But I still worry and I still feel afraid. I still dread opening my inbox. And if this can happen to someone like me, what hope is there for the millions of women and girls and increasingly, older women who suffer in silence?
Tech companies need to stop pretending they’re surprised by this. They’ve allowed it, enabled it and profited from it. Every moment they delay implementing meaningful safeguards, they are complicit in our trauma.
Deepfake porn is not just a violation of privacy. It’s a violation of personhood. It takes your image: your body, your face, your identity and turns it into something grotesque and weaponised. And it tells you that you no longer own yourself.
I refuse to accept that. If I make one promise to myself, it is that I am going to live my life with no excuses and no fear.
GLAMOUR is campaigning for the government to introduce an Image-Based Abuse Bill in partnership with Jodie Campaigns, the End Violence Against Women Coalition, Not Your Porn, and Professor Clare McGlynn.
Revenge Porn Helpline provides advice, guidance and support to victims of intimate image-based abuse over the age of 18 who live in the UK. You can call them on 0345 6000 459.