Many social media sites have come under increasing pressure of late. From free speech to hate speech concerns, to abuse and racism, as well as cyber bullying and child predators, social media has had their hands full over the years, none more so than Facebook and Twitter in recent months. One of Facebook’s growing pandemics is the presence of revenge porn, which has even extended to celebrities of late. But the company is seeking to solve some of these issues by asking users to send them their nude photos.
Facebook is looking to implement a new artificial intelligence algorithm to their social network, which will allow users to send their nude photos of themselves to Messenger. The company believes that this would be the easiest and most effective way of combating revenge porn. Regardless of their good intentions, you’ll have to admit that the request is a strange one, which goes against anyone’s good instincts to avoid such situations. But when you consider that many persons may have found themselves being photographed in the nude, whether intentional or otherwise, it may actually work.
The claim is that the company won’t be storing the images themselves, but rather creating photo matching capabilities (digital fingerprint of sorts) as well as caching links that could help to block it being shared in the first place. This will allow users to flag inappropriate photos they believe to have been shared on their network and for it to be automatically blocked. Facebook’s head of global safety, Antigone Davis said that “the safety and well-being of the Facebook community is our top priority. As part of our continued efforts to better detect and remove content that violates our community standards, we’re using image matching technology to prevent non-consensual intimate images from being shared on Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Groups and Messenger.”
The anti-revenge porn AI is currently being tested in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, and, if successful, will be rolled out to more regions over time. The system will require a level of trust between users and Facebook, and may not be overcome as easily as stated. Facebook, however, won’t be able to prevent persons from sharing the same photos on other platforms, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.
