You can download a PDF of SJAMS here.
Overview
This resource guide is designed to support both current and aspiring social justice workers by offering proactive measures and strategies to counter the anti-DEI/anti-woke hostility often used to bully, intimidate, and discourage activists in the field. We’ll discuss the types of threats that are emerging and existent at the time of this writing, as well as some strategies to protect yourself.
This document is structured into the following sections:
Caveat
Nothing in this document is intended to be legal advice, nor is it meant to suggest that if you follow the suggestions in this document that you will be able to avoid all forms of online or personal harassment. We share this document based on our own personal experiences, as well as our understanding of the current literature, as a way of helping to evolve the conversation around personal protection. We need as many people as possible in the fight to address historical injustice, and want to help you avoid intimidation that might deter you from engaging in this work. That said, we make no guarantees about any specific outcome.
Additionally, we acknowledge that the decisions around tightening up your personal data landscape are fraught. Often, the very people whom we believe need to hear messages about social justice may well be those who are most likely to react most negatively to our work and message. This document is agnostic about where you, personally, draw the line about how tightly you control your online presence. It is, rather, a guide to help you understand some of the options available to you, with an acknowledgement of the complexity of taking—or not—any of these specific actions.
Section 1: Understanding the Threat Landscape
Following are types of harassment that you might experience:,,
- Doxing: revealing personal information publicly
- Brigading: a group of people working together to harass an individual
- Revenge porn: disseminating private photos (real or falsified) without the individual’s consent
- Swatting: reporting a false threat to call an emergency response team to the individual’s home
- Cyberstalking: repeated and deliberate use of the internet and other electronic communication tools to engage in persistent, unwanted communication (public or private) intended to frighten, intimidate or harass someone
- Reforming the cookie from crumbs: Using AI or other bot-style technology to scrape the web for personal information about you, then reassemble a personal profile from the data scraps
We at QSIDE have been victims of several of these forms of harassment. Our experience is that such harassment is disorienting, intimidating, and violating. Below we have compiled a list of potential steps you can take in controlling your personal data, in order to minimize the opportunity for malicious persons to take any of these actions against you.
Below we outline our understanding of the scale and scope of the types of data about you that might be used to harass you. In the next sections, we’ll discuss strategies to prepare proactively and to respond if you are being targeted.
Your Personal Data Landscape
Many of us freely provide private information about ourselves online. We post information to social media, we put our pictures and biosketches on public, semi-public, and private web sites, we give our email, snail mail, and phone numbers out as a routine matter of daily life. This is part of being a person and a professional in the 21st century, and there are a lot of upsides to these practices.
Unfortunately, all of this shared data provides a wealth of access to you, including to individuals who may not agree with your social justice work. Response to your work may come from incidental access; for example, a friend of a friend sees a public post on Facebook or Instagram. Of course, responses may come from your direct network of friends, family, and colleagues. It is possible that people you may not expect, and sometimes people you may even be quite close to, may respond negatively. Friends and family members who share a difference in beliefs may confront you publicly or personally, and disagree vehemently in a way that makes interaction uncomfortable. Neighbors may become offended and approach you near your home or leave confrontational messages in your mailbox or on public message boards. Colleagues and supervisors may create a hostile work environment, and punish you professionally for your personal commitment to social justice. In some instances, particularly if your work receives significant attention, malicious actors who you don’t even know may intentionally mine your personal data to create a targeted intimidation campaign against you.
Your social justice work may be lauded by some, but negative response is also possible. As your work gains traction and visibility, some form of negative response becomes more likely. In the next section, we’ll discuss some options for managing your personal data landscape to help mitigate against this type of blowback.
The Broader Data Landscape
Even if we control our personal data flow, there is almost certainly a plethora of your personal data already online that you are not aware of, and over which you may have minimal control. This data could come from a friend’s social media, a company profile, personal information shared when registering for an online service, data scraped/mined from public resources, or a host of other places. Like it or not, most of us have a very large digital footprint about which we have almost no knowledge, and that extends far beyond information that we have intentionally provided about ourselves. It is important to be aware that, no matter how carefully you curate your personal data landscape, some amount of your personal data is likely to be available to individuals who are committed to finding it, despite your best efforts.
Emerging AI Threats
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to gain relevancy, prominence, and use in many academic and professional spaces, the amount of your personal data, as well as the types of threats from malicious actors, is also increasing. Beyond personal data being used to train AI models, AI tools can now create/recreate videos, images, and even voice recordings based on your content available online. At the time of this writing, AI models are being used to generate content of this nature with a minimal amount of data required. One of the prominent ways in which this technology is being used is to create highly-convincing “deep fakes”—that is, images, quotations, news stories, and even videos that seem real but are entirely generated by AI.
Don’t Despair, Prepare!
With the above warnings, it may seem quite overwhelming and intimidating, but we encourage you not to despair, but to prepare! Below we’ll discuss a series of mitigation strategies to help you plan for and, if needed, respond to online harassment.
Section 2: Proactive Measures to Take as a Social Justice Activist
You should consider taking proactive steps to prevent harassment if you are currently involved in or planning to engage in social justice advocacy. The following measures are meant to help minimize the inherent risk of having personal data around the internet which may be leveraged by malicious actors.
Proactive Measure #1: Evaluate your personal data landscape.
Evaluate your personal data landscape. Go through your social media and make a list of all the platforms on which you are active, or have been active. If an account is inactive, consider whether it makes more sense to archive, deactivate, or delete the account to maintain your privacy. Old accounts can be mined by those looking to embarrass, scandalize, or blackmail social justice advocates, politicians, and researchers.
A critical consideration when making decisions about your privacy is the audience. Who can see what? And more importantly, whom do you want to see what? Go through the list you’ve made and see if the accounts are private or public. If they are public, consider whether you can and should make the account private. If the account has to be public-facing, scan for personal connections and data that you may want to remove for your privacy and safety.
Similarly, be aware of the privacy of the channels and tools you are using to share sensitive or confidential information. A good first step is to evaluate the security of the platforms you are using, including whether they offer end-to-end encryption. While we do not endorse any specific tool, some platforms which purport to provide a greater level of privacy than standard email tools include ProtonMail, Signal, and Telegram.
One often overlooked aspect of creating a social media presence is the email you use to do so. You may want to consider using an email address specifically and exclusively created for posting on social media. This can help to “quarantine” the impact of a compromised email account.
Proactive Measure #2: Curate your broader social media footprint.
Once you have made intentional decisions about which of your accounts should remain active and which should be private, you can then assess and curate who is in your active network and following you. For people you do not know or who seem to be potentially malicious, you can choose to block or remove them from your follower or friends list. For people you do know, but are unsure of how they might respond (or know they would respond negatively), consider removing, blocking, or otherwise limiting their access to your content.
However, if blocking or removing people from your personal network feels too confrontational or could cause unwanted reactions, there are subtler ways to manage your visibility. You can curate a close friends list on Instagram or a similar function on other social media platforms. A private story is another way to advocate for social justice without removing friends, family, neighbors, or colleagues with whom you may not want to share your social justice work.
Proactive Measure #3: Limit the algorithm.
Another option available to you for your social media accounts is to “limit the algorithm” by stopping your profile from being “suggested” to people; at the time of this writing, this option is available via LinkedIn, Facebook, and several other environments. Similarly, some social media platforms may allow for certain account content to be restricted from people you select. You can usually find instructions for how to do this on various social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, through those sites’ Help sections or by doing an internet search.
Making and executing decisions about your social media settings such as those suggested above will empower you to decide what information is disseminated when, where, and to whom.
Proactive Measure #4: Remove yourself from others’ social posts and websites.
You may also want to look beyond social media and websites where you are the content curator to areas of the internet not under your direct control—for example, social media content where someone has tagged you. In scenarios where this content may be sensitive and could be traced back to you, you may wish to unaffiliate yourself.
Some platforms like Instagram allow you to remove yourself from a post someone tagged you in, giving you more agency over the content with which you are associated. If this option is not available, you may need to request the poster to remove you from a post. You can also flag the post or otherwise report it for removal to the social media platform moderators.
If your name, photo, or other information appears on a page of your current or a former employer’s company website, you can ask if your profile might be hidden or removed. You may also want to Google yourself to see where else information about you might be publicly posted, such as job-search sites, professional directories, lists of donors to charities, and/or political causes.
Proactive Measure #5: Disrupt people-finding.
Your personal information may also live in people search sites, or have been inadvertently exposed during a data leak from one of the platforms you use. These data are, primarily (but not exclusively) information about your location and personal communications, such as your work or home address, phone number, and email. While we do not endorse any of these explicitly, at the time of this writing, Experian offers a free scan for information, and paid services such as DeleteMe, Incogni, and Norton Reputation-Defender report to be able to help scrub these data from searchable databases.
In addition to text about your contact information and physical addresses, there are increasingly sophisticated tools that can identify your location based on photos or videos. Be mindful of what is being shown in pictures you take, as these may inadvertently be providing more information about your location than you expect. An inconspicuous sign or object in a picture may provide information about where the picture was taken with a shocking degree of precision. Similarly, pictures may contain metadata which can include information such as GPS coordinates. While most social media sites and messaging services remove this information, directly sharing an image file with someone may inadvertently share this data. While the risk of this type of people-finding remains relatively low at the time of this writing, the technology is evolving rapidly and it is something to pay attention to. If you are concerned about your physical wellbeing, be mindful of what images you post.
Proactive Measure #6: Defend against AI.
As AI becomes more prominent on our personal devices and on the internet, we should be wary of how it plays into the collection and sharing of our data. Many online services such as social media platforms are continuously being mined for AI training data. As a developing technology, and as the risks of AI are still being understood, this technology has the potential to produce unexpected and undesired results such as revealing a person’s name from its training data.
With this risk in mind, it is important to limit the exposure of our personal information to AI tools. Some suggestions include not sharing personal or professional information with ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and similar generative AI tools. For example, you may wish to avoid sharing your résumé with AI tools, as it likely has your entire work history and current communications channels. Not voluntarily sharing personal information with AI should help limit the potential for your data to be shared inadvertently (or intentionally) beyond these tools, or for your data to be used without your consent in other contexts.
Some safety measures suggested for other types of AI tools include being mindful of where your content such as pictures, videos, and voice recordings are available. High definition video and image content, in particular, may be used for nefarious purposes. If there is a lot of personal content easily accessible to people online, we recommend following the applicable mitigation strategies to limit your data exposure shared in the previous sections. Additionally, some devices and social media platforms may allow you to change the content’s resolution, possibly making them less viable to use with AI.
Lastly, it is also important to be knowledgeable about other sources that could be collecting data about you. For instance, the Federal Trade Commission has released statements regarding Amazon’s Alexa and Ring cameras storing voice and video recordings to refine its algorithms. Household and personal device assistants such as Google Home and Apple’s Siri are also collecting data. If you are using these devices, you may wish to review the terms of service and intentionally deselect all available options to store and/or share your personal data.
Section 3: Mitigation Strategies to Take if You are Being Harassed
Despite our best efforts, it is possible, particularly if your work receives public attention, that you may become the victim of one or more harassing campaigns. If you are in this situation, let us first say that we are sorry that this is happening to you. Our experience is that targeted, personal online harassment is disorienting, terrifying, and violating. Below we list some strategies to try to mitigate the damage and protect yourself.
Mitigation Strategy #1: Protect your physical environment and let people know.
The most important actions to take at this point are those geared towards ensuring your and your loved ones’ personal safety. If you are being harassed online, it is important that you make sure your surroundings remain safe for you. You may want to consider installing a video surveillance system and/or an intruder alarm so you can safely monitor who’s outside and around your home – with the previous caveats about these devices as a means of data collection and sharing notwithstanding.
Similarly, informing those in positions of authority in your community, such as campus safety officers or law enforcement, may help guide you with further actions to take – especially if the harasser feels uncomfortably close to you or if their threats become violent in nature. (If you feel that there is an imminent physical threat to your person, we recommend calling 9-1-1 and asking for immediate police assistance.) We acknowledge, however, that some individuals may, for very legitimate reasons, feel uncomfortable engaging with law enforcement. Regardless, we recommend alerting someone you trust about your concerns; in the event that something were to happen, you will want there to be a record of your concerns.
There are also organizations that track intolerance with whom you might consider filing a report, such as your local ACLU affiliate or the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project.
Remember to evaluate any possible privacy trade-offs with the personal safety solutions you determine necessary for your situation. For example, wired home security equipment may offer a greater level of security and privacy, but may imply additional installation costs. Police or other official authorities may or may not be seen as a trusted source of security. Balance your concerns about safety with these concerns appropriately.
Mitigation Strategy #2: Gather your support team
Being targeted online can be a distressing experience. You may need emotional support. More to the point, you may need help in gathering data about the scale, scope, and severity of the harassment. Enlist a few trusted friends, family, or other partners to help you through it.
Professionally, you might consider contacting the communications office on campus or within your organization for support and to plan coordinated efforts in counteracting the harassment.
Mitigation Strategy #3: Gather evidence
It can be tempting during the heat of an intimidation campaign to want to simply disconnect, keep your head down, and hope the problem will go away or die down. While this is understandable, it is important – particularly if the rhetoric against you is personal, threatening, and/or aggressive – to gather evidence. Your support team (see Mitigation Strategy #2 above) can be helpful here, particularly if you find engaging with the content about you to be traumatizing or retraumatizing. As you find information being spread/shared about you, take screenshots, download files, and otherwise capture and document the evidence to share with law enforcement, an attorney, or another person of authority should you ever need/want to. In our experience, officials often look to see a pattern of behavior, rather than an instance, before being willing to take action.
Mitigation Strategy #4: Prevent further proliferation.
If you are currently being harassed, it is important to prevent the proliferation of additional personal data. You may want to revise the proactive measures guided towards controlling and evaluating your personal landscape from the above section, along with any necessary additional measures. In extreme cases, you may wish to consider changing your phone number and deleting or deactivating social media accounts that may have been used to gather your personal information.
Mitigation Strategy #5: Don’t ignore it, expunge it!
If your personal information has been shared in a forum or social media post, you should attempt to contact the site administrators to have them remove that content. If they refuse, you may wish to engage with law enforcement – particularly with the FBI, as they have national jurisdiction and can work across state lines.
Mitigation Strategy #6: Don’t feed the trolls
It can be tempting for some who are being harassed online to try to “clear their name.” While engaging thoughtfully and trying to introduce truth into misinformation can be useful, engage judiciously. Sometimes the point of online harassment is to “get a rise” or “own the libs.” If you believe that the information/misinformation being posted about you is a good faith error or misrepresentation, you may wish to engage. We discourage, however, jumping into a toxic online environment; it is unlikely to be fruitful, and may end up supercharging the trolls.
Mitigation Strategy #7: Personal Wellbeing
Facing harassment can be an overwhelming fear and anxiety-inducing situation. At times the goal of these attacks will be to wear you down physically and emotionally through intimidation. It is important that you take action towards ensuring your personal wellbeing.
While at times you may feel entrapped by the threats, we suggest that you try to distance yourself from the constant exposure to the stress. Leveraging your support team can be a good strategy here. This support team can serve as a buffer, monitoring online posts, reading emails from unknown senders, and otherwise protecting you from having to deal with the full brunt of the intimidation.
Lastly, it is important to practice self-care to manage stress. This may look different from person to person but some practices we have found fruitful include: finding a good therapist and seeing them regularly, mindfulness practices such as meditation, exercising, and ensuring you are getting plenty of rest. If therapy or formal meditation classes are not available to you, you may want to look to free online resources such as YouTube for introductory mental health, wellness, or meditation resources, which are free and can be accessed anywhere with an internet connection. You may also wish to consult with your physician to see if they recommend any medical or pharmaceutical interventions. Take some time to focus on yourself by cultivating interests and activities outside of work and professional life.
Key Takeaways
Anti-DEI/anti-woke toxicity used to bully, intimidate, frighten and deter activists from the social justice advocacy field is, sadly, a part of this work. This behavior can have detrimental effects on one’s mental and physical wellbeing, and can have the intended effect of silencing voices and intimidating people from engaging in this critical work. The goal of this resource is to support social justice advocates by providing tools and techniques to protect and combat the toxicity and harassment they may face.
For current social justice advocates, and those starting to engage with this work, it is key to think intentionally about your online presence, and take proactive steps to ensure your personal safety by evaluating, curating, and controlling their personal landscape, and holistically evaluating your profile en-masse.
While every instance of harassment or backlash derived from social justice advocacy work is different, it is imperative to prioritize your personal wellbeing and safety. Being targeted for harassment can be very emotionally and physically draining. However, remember that you do not have to face this alone, and you are not powerless. It is important that you both surround yourself with supportive friends and family and take proactive and, if necessary, reactive measures to protect yourself. While this resource provides some initial mitigation strategies, if you or someone you know is facing harassment we recommend you to also seek guidance from people in positions of authority on how to best address your individual situation if it becomes violent or too overwhelming. You can also contact us here at QSIDE, qside@qsideinstitute.org; we are in this together.
Thank you for all you do.
SJAMS was created by The QSIDE Institute, with generous support provided by The RIOS Institute.
Social Justice Advocate Manual for Survival (SJAMS) © 2024 by The QSIDE Institute is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International