It was the subtitle 'Surviving Abuse and Harassment, and How to Fight Back' that drew me to Nina Jankowicz’s 'How to Be a Woman Online'. I think every woman with any level of audience on social media is all too familiar with the downsides of being a woman on the internet. While higher-profile women experience higher levels of abuse, online abuse is so ubiquitous that most women are subjected to some form of it. However, 'How to Be a Woman Online' is aimed at a certain type of woman dealing with this abuse and harassment. Namely, women who have the financial resources to pay for the services Jankowicz highlights to ensure their personal information is scrubbed from the internet and also whose employers are willing to step up and support them. This doesn’t account for the many women whose jobs have nothing to do with the abuse they receive online. I am particularly thinking of women who are activists and whose organisations are entirely volunteer-led. Overall, 'How to Be a Woman Online' is an interesting exploration of online abuse and harassment of women, but I am unsure how transferable the recommendations are for the majority of women who regularly deal with this abuse.

An unsurprising, infuriating, essential read. It's tough for obvious reasons, but so important and long overdue. Everyone should read this.

This book is long overdue and should be essential reading for any woman in the online arena, and any man looking to be a decent human being online.

“Women are socialised to be accommodating, but your social media profiles are not a democracy. Use the tools at your disposal however you wish to use them. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for protecting yourself.”

This is an absolutely fantastic break down of how to be online. It’s female centric, with a focus on intersectionality and brief recognition of the disparity of abuse faced by cis vs non cis individuals, but the takeaways are for everyone.

The book isn’t your typical tired collection of well-known case studies, but instead an active call to action, warning of the different types of engagement we can expect online from people with poor intentions, or ‘trolls’. There are actionable suggestions from intelligence professionals - former CIA agents and females in the public eye who have first hand experience taking down their trolls.

I really enjoyed the emphasis on online security - regarding two factor authorisation (2fa), archiving abuse to keep as evidence later on, and tracking any of your contact details that have been compromised and advice for every popular social media platform of today. Everything was clearly outlined in layman’s terms and accessible to anyone.

Further, I really enjoyed the lack of ‘shock-factor’ used on a topic we’re all aware of. Too often do authors regurgitate information we’re all aware of hoping to shock the reader. Instead, we’re given solid facts, investigative measures, further reading as well as links to useful websites and a breakdown of how to use them.

Truly a useful book everyone should have a gander over to make sure they’re as safe as they can be online. As we all put more online and the world becomes ever more digital, we’re all at risk of trolling, doxing and attacks - you never know when you might go viral.

Thank you NetGalley for the Arc.

I got this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Nina Jankowicz was the Director of the now defunct Disinformation Governance Board under the Joe Biden administration. The main aim of the board was to advise on best practices to tackle disinformation and to advise government bodies on online practices. This book, is in a similar vein, in that it discusses the safeguards that are available to women when they face harassment online. While the book may specifically focus on harassment done by men, I would reckon the advice holds up to any kind of online harassment.

In this short handbook, Jankowicz discusses her and other high profile women's online experiences when speaking out about important issues within their field and the programs and safety nets that they have curated to deal with online harassment. This ranges from descriptions of some of the apps, programs and services available to descriptions of the men that one may run into online. Or at least their tropes and how one best deals with them. Jankowicz also advises on how one can use the features of social media websites to their advantage. One example of this is blocking, which the book echoes, that one's profile is closer to a fiefdom rather than a democracy.

The conclusion I have arrived at was that it is very expensive to be a woman online or at least, it's expensive to be a famous woman online. There are of course good advice in there for the women who are on minimum wage (like myself). Such as building safe spaces for ourselves with friends, family and on private servers like discord and the above mentioned features of the social media companies themselves, like the above blocking. The generic advice feels like a general online etiquette lessons that some of you may have touched upon in high school. For example, a basic password manager is a given, and now one usually comes with your phone. However, how much can you trust the company that makes them and their software? The bills begin to pile up once you need services that scrub your online life, scrubbing comments, embarrassing videos and pictures that you may have posted online. The jump is even bigger once you need services that collect evidence to helps you build a case.

Perhaps this is why I thought that this is not really aimed at the average woman, though ultimately useful if you find yourself one morning waking up famous and faced with the ire of men online. There is a certain level of privilege in advising women to contact their local labour union to call their members to action, or your employer to help you and rehouse you if your home ever came under effect. Unless you are already in the public eye or a high profile member of the company an employer is very unlikely to do these steps. You are free to call me pessimistic, but its very hard to mobilise the public when the average Jane is being harassed on Facebook.

There is a larger conversation to be had about how much support women can get online, and the book is at least a good step in the right direction of showing the available tools that are available, even if some of it cannot be used by the average woman user.

The book shines when the author talks about her own and other women in the public eye who had been harassed and the way that they have dealt with it. A lot of the book contains repetition, especially as a way to summarise the chapter in Reddit's favourite TL;DR format. (If you are not internet savvy, this is shorthand for “too long; didn't read”, an expression that is supposed to be a time saver in our busy lives. Instead of this repetition of the chapters in short form, I personally wish this book would have focused more on those personal experiences and how they dealt with online harassment. As well as expanded discussions on how effective legislation is in places that enhanced online security and online harassment laws. The author offhandedly mentions other countries' internet and data programs, but the book never discusses how effective they actually are. Neither does the author discuss the challenges for such a legislation, either in the US or elsewhere. I think this was a missed opportunity for this title

Overall, this book saves time if you require any of the services that the book advertises and their usefulness. The book goes deep in that regard, however it repeats itself often. I think the spare pages could have gone to expand on certain things, such as expanding on the experiences of the women who the interviewer talks about who have experienced harassment during GamerGate, or the effectiveness of legislation. If you need a handbook on the type of men you may encounter online, or the services that are available, the book is great, it has some great recommendations. However, if you want a deeper exploration on the subject or what can be done about it, look elsewhere.

"How to Be a Women Online" is a set of guidelines written by Nina Jankowicz on how women could perceive the internet as a safer space.

The thing is, women who already are online, and have been for a while, already know these things, so this handbook felt a little bit like Jankowicz was preaching to the choir.

This book is aimed at very specific type of women: those who already put something online, be it a blog, a You Tube channel, a TikTok or an Instagram profile. "How to Be a Woman Online" speaks to the women of whom there are not that many: who have experienced online trolling or other misfortunes on the internet and still seem clueless about how to prevent or handle similar situations going forward.

There were bits of helpful advice, but the content, combined with a pink cover (cause it's for the girlies, amarite?), simply rubbed me the wrong way.

A interesting topic explored in this book about the risks that comes with being a woman online. A lot information contained was for those with a big presence on social media but did share information for those with a more private audience. It is a vital read, as our technology and social media is ever evolving and changing. Although a non fiction book, it shared light-hearted moments and was funny in places. I loved the tips on forming communities with other women to help protect yourself online.

Overall it is a great informative book into taking first steps into internet security, but there was a lot of repetition throughout the book. Thank you to net gallery and Bloomsbury Publishing for this advanced copy.

This book does am effective job of illustrating the extent to which online harassment can impact a person’s life, and provides practical advice on how to minimize its effects. It covers five areas of action: 1) implementing basic security measures, 2) dealing with trolls, 3) understanding policies of social media platforms, 4) building a support network, and 5) advocacy. It's an approachable read with helpful summaries at the end of every chapter, and the tone is kept light and conversational despite the heavy subject matter. I found chapter 2 particularly informative in its breakdown of the types of unsavory characters one might encounter in the wild. Chapter 4 resonated with me as someone whose group chats regularly feature accounts of my friends' most unpleasant internet escapades. That said, a couple of points of weakness stood out to me.

Firstly, the book is far from comprehensive. I recognize that its's not intended to be, but there are a few subtopics that warranted more discussion. For example, while chapter 1 explains how to scrub certain kinds of information off the internet, what steps can be taken to handle content outside of one's direct control? The author mentions her experience of being tagged in photos by random strangers, but doesn't follow up on this. The chapter might've benefitted from a section on how to approach unwanted media uploaded by others, and what guidelines, if any, are established by social media platforms for dealing with this. Another subtopic that could've been developed is legal consequences of harassment. Law enforcement is mentioned a few times as a last resort for handling threats, but what ought to be done if the harassers leak information that can put one in danger *from* law enforcement (such as immigration status, sex worker status, or LGBT identity in many parts of the world)? I'll admit that this is a a complicated subject to get into, but given that this book is so short, there certainly would've been room for a broader scope.

My second critique may seem like I'm missing the point, but bear with me. The way sexism is discussed in this book is often rather universalizing and black-and-white. This stood out to me throughout the text, and made the pages on intersectionality appear tack on as an afterthought. The lack of an intersectional lens seemed most evident in the author's implication that the terror of online harassment is something that men cannot truly understand; I'm not convinced that this is true, especially considering some of the vitriolic campaigns I've seen that target queer men and disabled men. I realize that this sounds like “won’t someone think of the men!”, but I don't think I'm derailing here, especially since this book is mainly a how-to and not at all a deep dive on online misogyny (which I would love to read! The analysis of trolls was the most interesting part of the book and I wish it went into greater detail.) Considering that most of the advice is actionable for anyone regardless of gender, I do have to wonder why the choice was made to direct it at a female audience specifically. My guess is it's better for marketing if you sell a pink item with "WOMAN" on the cover.

(An additional non-critique: this could just be me, but I found the tone to be off-putting at times. While I appreciated it trying to keep things light, the millennial girlboss-ism came close to being infantilizing; for example, the repeated use of "queendom" ground my gears a bit.)

I'm somewhat hesitant to recommend this, as some of the information it contains is likely just as accessible by a quick web search, particularly the cut-and-dry technical information in chapters 1 and 3. Chapters 2 and 4 were fairly insightful, but again, these were less rich than I would've liked. If you're broadly interested in the topic of online misogyny, this is only a jumping-off point, and I definitely plan to check out the works cited to learn more. Overall, this book is a decent primer for anyone who spends a lot of time on the internet and is likely to come up against above-average levels of hostility. I just would've liked to have seen more from it.

Wow! This is such a fantastic resource for women of all ages. It explores the dangers of being a woman online and give extremely practical steps for protecting yourself and others. I would highly recommend this for all women, but especially for teenagers who are just starting to experience social media as a way to educate and protect them moving forward. I really enjoyed this book!

This was an informative read with some important tips for being safe online. Some of these tips were well known, others were more unique and costly to employ.

The author combines forming solidarity with other women with online preventative programs and reactive measures all of which can be used to help keep you safe online.

Thanks Netgalley for this digital copy.

How to Be a Woman Online is a very thorough guide to navigating social media for those who identify as women. The advice in this book is incredibly accessible and informative. Jankowicz writes from experience; she herself has had the misfortune of dealing with a significant amount of harassment online. Thus, Jankowicz's advice covers not only practical matters but also emotional ones. This book has many helpful recommendations regarding management of the mental strain that comes with being threatened and trolled.

This guidebook is probably most useful for public-facing women like Jankowicz who are journalists and authors. However, as Jankowicz reiterates, women with all levels of followers are subject to misogynistic bullying and hatred online. Furthermore, while this book skews heavily towards navigating hate specifically on Twitter, it also outlines self-protection measures to be taken on other major apps like Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook, & LinkedIn.

How to be a Woman Online left me feeling totally prepared for potential future harassment. I would definitely recommend this book to any woman concerned about maintaining her privacy online or dealing with trolls. Nina Jankowicz's guide will make you feel less alone and arm you with the knowledge necessary to protect yourself.

As a woman known for being chronically online, I found this book so incredibly interesting. As technology and social media advances, I've found myself watching in wonder as more and more women put more and more information about themselves out there on the internet.

You see time and time again, someone puts up a personal story for their small audience- those who most likely already know them and know most of the story- and it blows up, making them have to make a follow-up video explaining it all. Those are personal stories, and people who had no intention of ever having the level of attention they now had. This specific example wasn't really touched on, but she includes a variety of other platforms and what measures you can take to protect yourself.

If you are a woman online, you more than likely have, unfortunately, experienced some level of harassment. This book does a wonderful job at detailing how to be a woman in these online spaces, and how to protect yourself. A necessary read for women online everywhere.

Thank you NetGalley for an ARC of this book!

How to Be a Woman Online is a book that combines advice with social analysis of the experiences of women, especially women in high-profile, public positions of power. Jankowicz writes intimately about her experiences as a woman who is a subject matter expert on Eastern European politics. She describes the attacks and misogyny she has experienced online and steps she took to protect herself. I really liked hearing from other women who occupy powerful positions in media and tech about what they went through and how they tried to come out on the other side of it. This is a great book for any woman or gender minority, especially those who plan on having high profile careers.

Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC! I LOVED this book. The author calls out other voices that can speak to experiences she does not have, I love that real women are spoken about a variety of different abuse and things that have actually happened to them online, providing real stories and concrete steps to minimize potential abuse and maximize safety. Each chapter has a TLDR section that's a perfect summary of the lessons and concrete steps to protect yourself. Having the stories of other women also featured in this book (women I actively follow on social media), brings an extra level of connection to the steps and the stories outlined in this book. I have plenty of tips now for myself to ensure my own online safety is continued and this book really helped me achieve that!

Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for the opportunity to read and review an e-ARC. As a journalist and avid social media user (in my private and public lives - which, yes, just got distinctly separated out) this is a great resource to keep at hand. I've been in the media business for over a decade and I still have never been part of a newsroom or organization who could either effectively prepare us for online harassment or properly help out on the defense side. Especially for women and those of other marginalized identities. So a lot of times, those seemingly professional battles become deeply personal ones too - and "How to Be a Woman Online" offers almost a safety manual of sorts along with actionable steps you can take to secure yourself.

Unfortunately, as the state of the world is, this book offers a guide on how to survive and cope with the dark side of social media rather than prevent it or eliminate it. I know such things are impossible right now, though I appreciate the text going into depth about emerging laws and attitudes that may gradually improve everyone's experiences. I do think that individuals with even a touch of public figure status (read, not necessarily famous or known, but someone whose profiles are noticed in some way) need to constantly reassess their account safety, their public messaging, and how much access they allow others to their content.

A lot of times, I find that when a woman brings up either specific instances of social media harassment or more general anxiety about existing in a public space, a lot of people who don't quite *get it* tend to give well-meaning but misplaced advice that doesn't quite take into consideration what it's asking. For example, they'll say to "just delete your account" as if that either makes harassment vanish or as if removing yourself entirely from a huge facet of modern social and professional life is a perfect option. This book acknowledges those people, which I deeply appreciated - but I don't necessarily think it's a book that will convince those people. For example, I can never effectively explain to my family why I am bitter about stepping away from Twitter -- because I felt that I needed to (at least temporarily, and for whatever forseeable future) but I also miss it as a fun space to share with friends and a networking opportunity through which I can boost my work and secure more job opportunities. This is definitely a resource guide for social media users who understand how much information will still be out there without their consent, and how to better prepare and deal.

As a journalist myself, some of the companies I've worked for have neglected to give me the proper training to protect myself. The ones that have gave me training similar to what is found in this book, and I found it to be incredibly helpful. We should put this book into the hands of any journalist the second they sign a contract.

Something I wish this book included more of is the idea that literally any of us could go viral at any time — either becoming the discourse of the day on Twitter or unintentionally taking of on TikTok -- places where you don't need a lot of followers to get a lot of views. You might not even be the person posting your own image and getting hate in return.

It's really short and quick and I'd recommend it to any woman thinking about a career in the public eye or considering investing time in their social media profiles at all. I wish there were a chapter on the more practical things non-influencers can do to protect themselves. I felt like that was missing and would have made the book appeal to a wider audience. I realize that having to write a book like this in the first place is pretty disturbing and I think that point is well-made here. But it's not just the outspoken women with something to say that end up suffering at the hands of online misogynists.

Thank you NetGalley for the free ebook in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you for allowing me to have a electronic advance reader copy of this book.

This was an empowering book that covers many aspects of protecting women online and draws on many resources that can be used to protect your history and your future while being online and broaches on many issues that females in the online community experience such as trolls hacking and protection although I think some of this came across more like pointing fingers instead of discussing the actual subject. But this does contain some straight to the point ways to deal with these problems although a lot of the revolve around having a significant income