The Me Too movement was founded by Tarana Burke, a social activist and community organizer, in 2006. She initially used the phrase "Me Too" on the Myspace social network to promote "empowerment through empathy" for sexual assault survivors, especially young and vulnerable women. In October 2017, actress Alyssa Milano encouraged using the phrase as a hashtag to help reveal the extent of problems with sexual harassment and assault by showing how many people have experienced these events themselves. The hashtag #MeToo was used starting in 2017 as a way to draw attention to the magnitude of the problem. The movement encourages women to speak up about their abuses, knowing that they are not alone. The phrase "Me too" was tweeted by Milano on October 15, 2017, and had been used more than 200,000 times by the end of the day. It was also tweeted more than 500,000 times by October 16 and the hashtag was used by more than 4.7 million people in 12 million posts during the first 24 hours on Facebook.