When one creates a social media account, one is bound to the host platform’s privacy policies and community guidelines. Each user knows that should they violate these rules, they risk losing their account. How, then, have so many people managed to use social media to exacerbate the plights of Afghan women and girls?

As I opened the X app today, I stumbled upon a tweet by an Afghan journalist I follow, her smiling face captured in a photo. Within minutes of posting, a deluge of comments flooded in, predominantly from Afghan men, including some with Taliban profiles. These comments were repugnant — rife with attacks, abuse, and sexual insults lobbed at the journalist. It was a disgraceful display, leaving me both embarrassed and enraged, momentarily unable to distinguish regular Afghan men from their counterparts in the Taliban.

Even before the Taliban’s 2021 resurgence, the internet felt like something of a Wild West for Afghan women. If we opted to access the internet and social media platforms, we trod carefully, concealing our identities lest we face harassment and threats.

Khalida Hamidi, a young journalist in Kabul, lost her best friend, Mina Khairi, in a June 2021 bombing. The incident was made all the more painful by the fact that Khairi died alongside her mother. This tragedy galvanized Khalida, inspiring her to become a vocal critic of the Taliban, shining a light on its brutality, and on its efforts to curb fundamental rights and freedoms. Her advocacy efforts led her to quickly accumulate more than 20,000 Instagram followers.

“I believe every woman and girl who has endeavored to post publicly has been the recipient of hateful comments. We all know that if we opt to post political content, particularly content disparaging the Taliban, people will want to hurt us,” Khalida told me in a recent interview.

She would know. She became a target for Taliban threats even before they reached Kabul in the summer of 2021.

“Taliban members and supporters would post comments like, ‘Just wait till we get through with you,’ and even published my work address,” she said, noting that she got into the habit of blocking doxxers and pro-Taliban zealots left and right.

In those early months of the summer of 2021, Khalida would not have believed that the Taliban would soon rule Afghanistan. She watched in horror in August of that year as the regime took Kabul and then the whole country.

As the Taliban firmed its grip on power, women and girls lost all their fundamental rights, initially losing basic labor and educational rights, and ultimately finding themselves largely confined to their homes. This was a devastating blow to a generation of young women and girls who had only known life free from Taliban rule – a generation who believed the world was filled with possibilities, that if one worked hard enough, she could achieve anything.

All the while, women with media and social media presences found themselves easy targets. “I quickly deleted my Facebook account and combed through my Instagram account, deleting posts that could get me into trouble,” she said. “But I never felt safe, and I started to fear for my two younger sisters, who I’m helping to raise. Ultimately, scared for all of our safety, I fled the country and moved to Canada.”

As the women and girls of Afghanistan have watched their rights slip away, they have also become increasingly creative with finding ways to expand their intellectual horizons.

To this end, many have turned to social media to learn and to share their experiences with the broader world. This could be the perfect solution, but misogyny has ruined even this for many. When a woman shares a selfie online, she faces threats, humiliation, and violence.

Social media should offer a respite from our plight, not a perpetuation thereof.

I call on the social media giants around the globe to examine their practices relevant to harassment and to work harder to bolster the rights and security of Afghan women and girls. It’s bad enough to be silenced and shunted aside by our their own government; they should at the least have the opportunity to safely engage with the world, if only through smartphones and computers.

It is imperative that social media companies act to combat hate, violence, and threats against women on social media. Failure to act aligns with the Taliban’s dehumanization of us. Stand with Afghan women; your silence is complicity in their oppression.

The author is an Afghan legal scholar. Her identity cannot be disclosed publicly due to acute security threats.