UN agency backtracks, expresses “regret” over cyberviolence report

On Oct 7, a United Nations agency that published a report about "cyber violence against women and girls" formally retracted that report following criticism from the likes of games industry lobbyists and advocates for online abuse victims. The September 24 report, issued by the International Telecommunication Union, was published on the same day that the United Nations hosted a symposium at its New York headquarters that gathered women from across the world to talk about the Internet's potential as a platform for harassment and abuse.

The accompanying report touched on those issues, but its accusations about video games as a broader inspiration for violence included messy citations that failed to back up such assertions. One lengthy takedown, posted by Jaime King, was able to discredit over 30 percent of the citations in the report. They ranged from circular (the UN citing itself) to dubious (citing Wikipedia) to baffling (just straight-up blank entries). More critics followed, including symposium participant and Crash Override founder Zoe Quinn, who pointed out that the sloppiness of the paper could "kneecap" various efforts to combat online abuse and hate speech.