🚩A warning. This is a very important topic but also be aware that in talking about the protection of young girls and women, and the abuse directed at our podcast guest, some may find the discussion distressing.
In this episode of Family Matters, what happens when standing up for women and girls makes you the target of one of the worst online violence campaigns the world has seen?
Melinda Tankard Reist, founder of Collective Shout ( @collectiveshout ) has spent 16 years fighting the sexualisation and objectification of women and girls — taking on big brands, pulling child sex abuse dolls off six global platforms, removing Andrew Tate’s courses from Spotify, and getting extreme porn magazines out of corner stores.
But when Collective Shout helped remove thousands of rape and incest simulation games from Steam and Itch.io, the backlash was unprecedented. What followed was a coordinated global cyber terror attack: thousands of rape and death threats, AI-generated deepfake pornography, doxxing, hacking, and fabricated headlines branding the Collective Shout team as criminals.
Melinda shares the harrowing story behind the two reports tabled at Australian Parliament House — including the UN Special Rapporteur calling it “the most serious form of online violence against women human rights defenders I have seen in a long time.”
We also discuss:
• How AI is being weaponised against women and girls
• How Grok in particular, was used to sexually harass the team
• The urgent need for online safety law reform
• A new global campaign to ban “nudifying” apps that target schoolgirls This is a story of resilience, courage, and the fight to keep women’s voices in the digital public square.
🌐 Check out www.collectiveshout.org for more information and to sign up to their newsletter If this episode opened your eyes, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Awareness is the first step toward change. — #familymatters #familyfirstnz
