Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Social Media “Ghosts”: How Facebook (Meta) Memories Complicates Healing For Survivors Of Intimate Partner Violence, Nicolette Little

Publications and Scholarship

This paper contributes to feminist conversations about algorithms and design justice by examining ways Facebook’s (Meta) Memories affordance, when it draws on previously posted photographs of abusive former partners, is problematic for gender-based violence (GBV) survivors. With analyses drawn from semi-structured interviews with twelve “survivor-users” and a walkthrough of Memories’ settings to better understand what opportunities users have to control this function, this paper finds that Memories triggers survivors, makes their abuser seem inescapable and reduces survivors’ sense of agency, among other challenges to their well-being. By extending abusers’ intimidation back into survivors’ lives, Memories unintentionally supports perpetrators’ aims: to …