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Meta has shut down an Italian Facebook group where men exchanged intimate photos of their wives without their knowledge, after users reported it to the authorities sparking a public outcry.
The group called Mia Moglie❤❤❤, meaning “my wife”, started in 2019 without any restrictions for users to join, reaching 32,000 members this year and exchanging hundreds of photos and sexist comments.
The scandal has exposed deep gender tensions in Italy, where women are the main victims of online hate, particularly targeting their physical appearance, according to Vox, a non-profit monitoring online discourse.
The rightwing government led by Giorgia Meloni is facing growing pressure from opposition lawmakers. The Five Star Movement said it was asking the government to take action against “an unacceptable patriarchal mentality that reduces women to objects and instruments of possession”.
Roberta Mori from the Democratic Party said this was not an isolated incident, but “another example of structural digital violence rooted in the same patriarchal culture of domination” encountered in France in the case of Gisèle Pelicot, who was raped for years by her husband and his male friends.
Mori called for a “united front between institutions, regulatory authorities, civil society, and digital platforms to stop rape culture at all times, including when it manifests itself online”.
The Italian government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bianca Bellucci, a women’s rights activist, said the case was “the n-th manifestation of a patriarchal society that treats women as objects to possess and exchange”.
Meta on Wednesday said it shut down the group “for violating our Adult Sexual Exploitation policies’’.
“We do not allow content that threatens or promotes sexual violence, sexual assault or sexual exploitation on our platforms,” the company added.
Feminist influencer Carolina Capria publicly denounced Mia Moglie❤❤❤ on Tuesday in an Instagram post that quickly went viral, prompting other users to report the Facebook group to the authorities.
Capria told the Financial Times that men posting images of their partners’ bodies without their consent amounted to a “virtual gang rape”.
Italy’s Postal Police, the digital law enforcement authority handling such cases, has received some 2,800 complaints — some of which came from alleged victims, the agency told the FT on Thursday.
‘’We have received an incredibly high number of complaints, it has never happened before’’, said Barbara Strappato, deputy director of the Postal Police. “There was no authorisation whatsoever for the use of the intimate images.’’
Italian authorities said they did not know exactly for how long men had been using it to exchange explicit pictures. But the fact that the group remained active for six years despite Meta’s explicit ban on sexually exploitative imagery raises questions about its ability to enforce rules.
Meta earlier this year relaxed some of its content moderation policies to placate the Trump administration, despite calls from civil rights groups to more closely police content.
Marisa Marraffino, a lawyer specialised in online criminal cases, said members of the Mia Moglie❤❤❤ group who shared intimate photos, or commented on them, could face criminal charges punishable with up to six years in prison.
Potential offences include the illegal sharing of intimate images — or revenge porn — privacy violations, aggravated defamation, and child pornography, Marraffino said.
Under Italian law, women have six months to press charges against potential revenge porn perpetrators, she said, adding that it “may result in a maxi trial involving thousands of families”.
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