Would you share your most intimate thoughts with strangers?
While women get friendship and advice from the groups, its at a cost.
Group administrators spend countless unpaid hours screening new members, managing group conflict, and ensuring accuracy of information.
It’s free, every week, in your inbox.
The labor of creating and maintaining peer communities online is often invisible, undervalued, and fraught with risk.
The practice of screen-shotting content from supposedly private spaces is an ever-present risk.
We interviewed women who are members of closed Facebook groups.
But these groups require significant labor to create and maintain.
But ironically, it takes a lot of work to create, maintain and participate in these groups.
Members and administrators of these groups work hard to make them safe, trustworthy, and inclusive.
But with COVID lockdowns affecting much of Australias population, tensions have pushed some groups to breaking point.
