Happy Nice Mall

Payton Iheme’s wide-ranging career has taken him from collecting intelligence in the Army to advising on science and technology to the White House. Working for a dating app wasn’t the next most obvious move.

But Ms. Iheme, 43, Bumble’s head of public policy for the Americas, found a reason that synthesized her past experiences. Efforts are being made in several states to pass laws penalizing “cyber flash”.

The term refers to the act of sending unsolicited sexual images to another person on a dating app or social media platform, as well as digitally via text or another file-sharing service such as AirDrop. (Apple, the maker of AirDrop, did not respond to requests for comment.) For many people of a certain age, especially women, cyberflash has become another cost of online presence.

This winter, while touring a speculative Smithsonian exhibit called “The Future,” Ms. Iheme said the purpose of her work is to challenge the norms of online interaction.

“How do we want people to interact online?” said. “Do you need to have a segment of the population experiencing this type of vile harassment?” According to the Pew Research Center, about one-third of women under the age of 35 in the United States have been sexually harassed online. questionnaire. This legislative work, Ms. Iheme, said, “Can we draw a line in the sand and stand up and take a step back against all negativity and harassment?”

Victoria Vilk, program director of digital security and freedom of expression at PEN America, said cyber flash and other online harassment tactics are part of a “deliberate effort to drive women and marginalized voices away from the internet and make people feel unsafe in public.” at home, on their phones, on their laptops.”

A YouGov survey In the UK, it found that 40 percent of millennial women received an unsolicited photograph of the male genitalia. For girls aged 12-18, this rate is even higher. an academic report It is funded by various universities and organizations in the UK. Three-quarters of the girls surveyed said they had received obscene photos from boys, with the majority describing them as undesirable.

“Everyone understands how inappropriate it would be for me to go out in public and have someone drop their pants in front of me,” said Carrie Coyner, a Republican member of the Virginia House of Delegates. “However, for some reason, we were unable to notice that the same behavior was no different if it was sent to you from your device.” Recently working at Bumble, Virginia made a law this entitles the recipient of an unsolicited obscene image to $500 in compensation.

İheme Hanım said that digital spaces are similar to public spaces in the physical world in terms of privacy and security, especially for people who have been connected to the internet since childhood.

“The harm done online is as real as it is offline,” Ms. Iheme said. “Older people go online for a few things. For the younger generation, the internet is ‘things’.”

State Senator Melissa Agard, a Democrat in Wisconsin, teamed up with Bumble in January to introduce an anti-cyberflash bill. She didn’t get voted in this session, she said, but she’ll reintroduce the bill in January. Bills like this aren’t just about punishing perpetrators, she said. “They provide an opportunity for people to talk about consent,” she said.

Ms Vilk of PEN America said that while anti-cyber-flash legislation is important, it should not be used by tech companies as an excuse to deflect responsibility for users’ safety. She noted that Bumble is combining its policy work with other efforts, including installing artificial intelligence software that detects and blurs explicit photos. (Those who share such photos without permission, blocked from app.)

Bumble, a dating app where women should take the first step, began pushing for anti-cyberflash laws in 2019 in Texas, where the company’s efforts helped make it a success. invoice This made posting obscene photos without the recipient’s consent a class C misdemeanor.

“The lesson learned is that conveying this kind of thing is no easy task,” said Ms. Iheme, who joined Bumble in 2021. Since then, Bumble has been working with politicians in California, New York, and Pennsylvania. write their own bills that are at different stages of the legislative process.

Gaining support for anti-cyberflash legislation has been an uphill battle. In each state Bumble enters, Ms. Iheme and her team must reintroduce the concept of cyberflashing, explain what it means, find stakeholders to partner with, and figure out how to frame legislation for local voters.

Nima Elmi, who oversees public policy for Bumble in Europe, said the United States poses particular challenges when it comes to passing laws. “The personalities of the policy makers, their political affiliation, these all mean they can be separate countries in their own right,” he said of the different states. Negotiating these differences requires a tenacious and agile person sensitive to nuances, she said.

Ms. Iheme talked about how working for the military helped her hone these skills while having lunch at one of her favorite restaurants in Washington, the Old Ebbitt Grill, frequented by the city’s power brokers.

“Military personnel have certain clues and markings as to one’s seniority, what their surrounding placement is, whether they are friend or foe,” he said. “If you walk into a room or walk into a place, you better be able to immediately assess what the situation is. Now there are people in blazers and suits, but it’s the same exercise.”

Miss Iheme – whose name is Nkechi; Payton is his middle name – he joined the army at age 17 and stayed there for two years before enrolling at the University of Texas at Arlington. Shortly before his expected graduation, the United States invaded Iraq.

“They were taking my boot size and my uniform size when I was still in college,” he said. “It was something that no one could really help you with. Only certain generations went to war. It wasn’t something we could really find answers to our parents and other people in the community.”

As an intelligence officer, Ms. Iheme was responsible for dozens of people and managed millions of dollars’ worth of equipment and budgets. By the age of 29 she had completed two combat tours.

He remained in the Department of Defense for 21 years and continued to work in the humanitarian field in Guyana and was part of relief efforts in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. Eventually, he joined America’s corridors of power as a member of Congress.

He worked on Capitol Hill for two years and earned a master’s degree in legislative affairs from George Washington University. He later joined the Pentagon, then moved to the White House of President Barack Obama, where he became a senior policy adviser on science and technology. One of the highlights of his time was when he met Katherine Johnson, the NASA mathematician who inspired the movie “Hidden Figures,” and accompanied her to the White House. Miss Iheme’s last job before Bumble was public policy at Facebook.

Throughout her career, she has often been the only Black woman in the room. “I have to be in a lot of organizations where people don’t look like me,” she said. “A lot of times you can internalize it and second-guess yourself.” Being in these areas will sometimes “shape up,” she said.

“Where I am now as a leader, I am no longer changing form,” he said.

And she does everything she can to support others who feel they can’t speak for themselves.

“The internet I want to see in the future is the same as the world I want to see in the future,” said Ms. Iheme. “And it’s a place where people can have freedom and exercise their own rights without harming anyone else’s.”