A Chinese woman found a video of herself on Pornhub. Her new app aims to help survivors of image-based abuse
- The woman came close to taking her own life after learning about the non-consensual footage. Now she is fighting for justice
- She hopes her app, Alecto AI, will help others find their images online – the first step to getting them removed
It was a sunny spring afternoon last year when Tisiphone, 25, received a phone call from a male friend that turned her life upside down.
“He told me that I was on Pornhub. Of course, my first reaction was that it must be a mistake. How could it be me?” said the Chinese woman, who asked for her details to be kept private and to be identified as Tisiphone – one of the Furies, the Greek goddesses of vengeance.
“The incident happened maybe seven years ago. I was really young, a teenager … I had no idea that monster had secretly filmed me until I saw my video on Pornhub,” Tisiphone said. “It was really devastating. I consider myself a very strong person and well educated, but that was the moment when I literally stopped and thought, ‘I can’t live any more. I don’t want to live any more’.”
She then went to the roof of her building and climbed over the fence.
“At that time, it was for me the only way to get out of it, because I was so ashamed, and I was so scared. I felt like I was betrayed by the whole world,” Tisiphone said, adding that she was only deterred by the thought of how much pain her family would endure if they lost her.