“Our Content Should Be Treated Differently”: Race, Gender, Language, and the Experiences of Quechua Women on Social Media

Abstract

I examine online gender-based violence (GBV) targeted at Quechua women social media users who post in Quechua and how trust and safety systems address this problem. This builds on previous research on how such systems operate in low-resource languages and the literature on online GBV in the Majority World. I use an intersectional framework to examine how the overlapping identities of race, gender, and language shape who has power when posting in a low-resource language (i.e., Quechua). Using a 2024/25 survey of Quechua social media users; interviews with content moderators, linguistic activists, and others; and social media comments about Quechua women influencers on TikTok and YouTube during 2025, I find that Quechua women are targeted with online GBV because of their race, gender, and language. The analysis also suggests that trust and safety systems fail to provide protection for these women, in part because moderation and reporting policies are ineffective and because the AI-based tools used by social media companies perform worse in Quechua. I argue that social media platforms should treat the content of historically oppressed groups differently—with greater protection, community engagement, and investment.