Cyberbullying on Social Media – Know Your Rights

What Is Cyberbullying? Definition and Examples

Cyberbullying is an umbrella term for repeated, targeted digital attacks against a specific person. It typically involves a pattern rather than a single incident: degrading comments, public humiliation, the spread of false or private information, threats, or coordinated harassment by a group. What distinguishes cyberbullying from an isolated offensive message is its systematic, recurring character.

Common Forms of Cyberbullying on Social Media

• Repeated degrading or mocking comments on posts, stories or videos
• Coordinated pile-ons or mass-reporting campaigns against the victim
• Publicly sharing private information or images without consent
• Creating fake profiles to mock, impersonate or harass the victim
• Threats, intimidation or incitement of others to target the victim
• Tagging the victim in humiliating content without their consent
• Misusing report functions to suppress the victim's own content

Cyberbullying vs. Cyberstalking: What Is the Difference?

The two terms are closely related but describe different patterns of behaviour. Cyberbullying typically involves repeated attacks – often carried out by more than one person – that degrade, humiliate or threaten the victim in a visible, public way. The focus is on harm to the victim's reputation, emotional wellbeing or social standing. Cyberstalking, by contrast, is more specifically characterised by one person systematically monitoring, following or contacting another without consent, in a way that causes fear. Surveillance and control are the defining elements rather than public humiliation. In practice, the two frequently overlap: a stalker may also run a public harassment campaign, and a bullying situation can escalate into stalking behaviour. User Rights can handle cases that contain elements of both.

Since the Digital Services Act (DSA) came into force, users can challenge unfair moderation decisions through a certified out-of-court dispute settlement body. User Rights is the first such body certified under Article 21 DSA in Europe for Social Media Platforms, certified by the German Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur). You do not need to complete the platform's internal complaint procedure before turning to User Rights. All we require is proof that you submitted a report or filed an internal appeal through the platform's complaint mechanism. Cases are currently reviewed for Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Our assessments are based on platform policies and, where relevant, EU law as well as national law – including German and Italian law in applicable cases.

Cyberbullying Policies on Social Media Platforms

All platforms covered by User Rights are subject to the DSA, which requires them to give reasons for moderation decisions and to cooperate with certified dispute settlement bodies. Each platform also prohibits bullying and harassment in its community standards.

Meta: Instagram and Facebook

Meta's Bullying and Harassment policy covers targeted attacks on private individuals, including threats, the sharing of personally identifiable information and content designed to degrade or shame. For public figures, Meta removes only severe attacks and certain attacks where the person is directly tagged; for private individuals it also removes content meant to degrade or shame. Anyone under 18 receives the strongest protection regardless of status. Some categories, including first-person voice bullying and unwanted manipulated imagery, are enforced only when the affected person reports them. Automated moderation at Instagram and Facebook regularly fails to recognise a harassment pattern across multiple accounts or posts.

TikTok

TikTok's Community Guidelines on Harassment and Bullying cover behaviour as well as content. Prohibited conduct includes degrading someone on the basis of characteristics such as appearance, intellect, personality or hygiene, inciting others to bully or exclude an individual, and promoting coordinated harassment or attempting to create conflict between people, for example by calling on others to flood the comments with abusive language. Threatening or encouraging others to doxx, blackmail, share account information or hack an account is also prohibited. TikTok may also restrict content without removing it entirely by making it ineligible for recommendation on the "For your Feed" (FYF) page which is a reviewable moderation measure even when the post remains visible.

TikTok allows counter-speech and condemnation, and applies a lower level of protection to public figures, while still removing serious forms of harassment. Awareness campaigns and narrative or artistic depictions are excepted, but only where the behaviour is not being praised or promoted. These carve-outs are where enforcement most often goes wrong: a video calling out someone's abusive conduct sits close to the retaliatory harassment line, and automated review is poorly placed to tell the two apart.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn's Professional Community Policies prohibit targeted personal attacks, intimidation, shaming, revealing others' personal information, trolling or degrading language or repetitive content which disrupts conversations.

Cyberbullying on LinkedIn often targets people's professional reputation: through false reviews, coordinated negative comments, or posts designed to damage their standing with employers or clients.

Pinterest

Pinterest's Community Guidelines explicitly prohibit harassment, privacy violations and cyberbullying. Pinterest states it is not a place for antagonistic, harmful or hateful content or behaviour, and may remove, limit or block distribution of such content and the accounts spreading it depending on the harm posed. Bullying on Pinterest frequently takes the form of boards or collections created to publicly mock or humiliate a specific person.

What Can You Do if You Are Affected?

There are two situations in which User Rights can help with cyberbullying: the platform has not acted on harassment you reported, or your own content has been wrongly removed – for example, because a perpetrator misused the report function to silence you.

Scenario A: You are experiencing cyberbullying and the platform has not acted

1. Document the pattern: Screenshot every relevant post, comment or account with the profile name, URL, date and time. Cyberbullying is defined by its repetition – a chronological record that shows the pattern is essential for any review. A simple table with date, platform, content and URL is ideal.
2. Report to the platform: Use the in-built reporting function for each piece of content or account. Where possible, indicate in your report that the incidents form part of a pattern of harassment – not isolated events.
3. Appeal if dismissed: If the platform closes your report without action, use its appeal mechanism via the help centre or the notification you received. Keep a record of the appeal and the platform's response. Please note: You do not have to wait for a platform response to file a case with User Rights. If you appealed longer than a week ago, you are able to make a submission if you provide evidence you filed a case that remained unanswered with the platform.
4. Submit to User Rights: If the platform's inaction was inconsistent with its own bullying and harassment policy or violated local German or Italian laws, submit a complaint to User Rights. The review is free of charge for users.

Scenario B: Your own content was removed or your account restricted

1. Check the reason: Under Art. 17 DSA, platforms must give a specific reason for every moderation action. If the stated reason does not match your content – for example, if a post documenting harassment was removed as 'harassment' itself – document this discrepancy.
2. Appeal internally: Use the platform's appeal function. If the removal appears to be the result of coordinated false reports by a bully, make this context explicit in your appeal.
3. Submit to User Rights: If the appeal was unsuccessful or not answered, submit your case. User Rights will assess whether the removal was consistent with the platform's own policies. Note that User Rights only assesses the compatibility of the content with the Community Guideline cited by the platform.

Note: User Rights does not review the content of direct messages, or moderation actions that were taken more than six months ago. In addition, a separate case must be submitted to User Rights for each moderation action or each piece of content that has not been removed.

Is a platform ignoring your cyberbullying reports – or was your content wrongly removed?