On Thursday, US Vice President Kamala Harris launched an online harassment task group, fulfilling one of Biden’s campaign promises in the aftermath of a mass shooting that highlighted the relationship between online abuse and violence.
The panel has six months to provide a strategy outlining ways to address the problem, including more victim assistance, prevention, and more accountability for aggressors and platforms that host them.
“This affects all of us if it affects any one of us. We therefore, all of us, have a responsibility to stand together, to support those who have gone through this but to also recognize they shouldn’t have to be alone fighting on this issue,” Harris said during the task force launch.
According to senior administration officials who previewed the news in a teleconference on Wednesday evening, the White House Gender Policy Council and the National Security Council will co-chair the group.
The task force was formed in the aftermath of a mass shooting in Texas, in which the gunman reportedly posted violent internet propaganda before going on a killing spree.
Before the incident, Salvador Ramos vowed to rape girls and shoot up schools on the social networking app Yubo, killing 19 children and two adults in an elementary school in Uvalde.
In the United States, one in every three women under the age of 35 and more than half of LGBT persons say they have been harassed or stalked online.
On Thursday, Harris was joined by Attorney General Merrick Garland, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and tennis sensation Sloane Stephens, who made public a flurry of nasty comments she got on social media following her defeat at the US Open, including racial and sexist abuse.
