Last month, one Sonoma State alumna and one student fell victim to the internet’s newest sexual harassment trend: “cum tributing”. This alarming new trend has caused new concern to arise within the SSU community surrounding internet safety.

Tributing is a form of online sexual harassment where predators screenshot a photo of their victim from their social media account, photoshop the photo to make the figures look nude, and send videos to their victims of themselves masturbating to the photo. The name comes from the harasser’s belief that doing this is a form of tributing their attraction to the victims

In the case of the SSU students, an Instagram account under the name @jneqqtty took a photo off one of the victims’ public Instagram. They photoshopped the original picture to make the students appear nude, and sent it to them via Instagram direct message. After sending them the photo, they proceeded to send an array of predatory messages and videos of multiple different men masturbating to the photoshopped image. The victims immediately recognized it was a photoshopped picture due to the background of the image, however, to an untrained eye the picture looks real. The private Instagram account is still active on the social media platform, following 55 other accounts.

One SSU victim spoke to a criminal attorney, who stated that the case would not qualify as sexual harassment. They explained that the case would not qualify as criminal, only civil, as they would have no way to track down the owner of the private Instagram account. The attorney then explained that the crime itself would not be worthy of arrest and sent the victim on their way.

As of now, federal and California state authorities have both criminal and civil laws for online sexual harassment. In criminal cases, onlineharassmentfieldmanual.pen.org states, “Law enforcers have considerable discretion about which cases to investigate and prosecute, and their decisions can be shaped by implicit and explicit biases. Law enforcers are sometimes more likely to help if the person being harassed is a public figure.” Civil cases allow victims of online harassment and abuse to sue their abuser for tort claims. “Tort claims include intentional infliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy, and defamation.” 

There are also laws surrounding Nonconsensual Intimate Imagery (NCII), instances when sexually explicit images are shared without consent, “States, like California, provide a civil claim specifically for NCII, under which victims can sue the person who distributed intimate images.” Although these laws are great progress to protect people online with their intimate photos, none of these laws actually address the issue of tributing, since it is a widely unknown form of online sexual harassment. 

The anonymous victims decided to report the situation to the Rohnert Park Department of Public Safety following their experience with the attorney. Their experience was less than ideal. 

The first victim states the officer, “…talked to me like I was a child. He was not sympathetic or respectful, and made me feel stupid for going to them… I was crying when I got home.” 

The police told the two Sonoma State victims that the case was out of jurisdiction, and to report the account that sent them the photoshopped nude picture through Instagram, and file a complaint about breaking community guidelines. 

They filed a full report of the situation to Instagram headquarters, and waited for a response. Instagram responded to the situation, saying, “Because of the high volume of reports we receive, our team hasn’t been able to review your report.” 

Instagram’s community guidelines state, “we don’t allow nudity on Instagram. This includes photos, videos, and some digitally-created content,” but this only applies for posted images, not photos shared through Direct Messaging. Nude or sexual photos shared through DM will be blurred, but not prohibited from being sent. Instagram claims they promise to, “remove… content  that targets private individuals to degrade or shame them, and repeated unwanted messages,” however, for reasons unknown this case was not prioritized to be put under review. 

The second victims shares, “this is the reason a lot of women don’t come forward to to talk about sexual harassment or assault because it’s so difficult to actually have anyone listen to you or have anything be done about it.”

Despite the lack of punishment being done by Instagram or Law Enforcement, one of the most important things being done with this case is the spread of awareness. There is little to no information on the new form of sexual harassment, “tributing.” The more victims that speak out, the closer we can get to understanding how online sexual abusers and harassers are finessing their ways around online harassment laws.