Facebook is testing a new feature to prevent revenge porn on its platform. Australia, which launched a national portal to address the issues of the revenge porn victims last month, is the first country to test Facebook’s new anti-revenge porn tool.
How does this anti Revenge Porn tool work?
If someone fears that they are at risk of revenge porn, then they need to contact the office of the Australian government’s e-Safety Commissioner. Then the social networking firm, in collaboration with e-Safety, wants the users to upload their intimate photos directly to their messenger. Once the user does so, the social networking site will digitally “hash” the media giving it a digital identity.
“We see many scenarios where maybe photos or videos were taken consensually at one point, but there was not any sort of consent to send the images or videos more broadly,” e-Safety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant told ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).
Facebook will then be able to track the hash online with the help of the algorithms used in photos and video matching tools. This will help the company to prevent the photos and videos from being shared on the social media.
“They’re not storing the image, they’re storing the link and using artificial intelligence and other photo-matching technologies. So if somebody tried to upload that same image, which would have the same digital footprint or hash value, it will be prevented from being uploaded,” Grant said.
After Australia, Facebook will test the new technology in the U.S., U.K. and Canada, according to Mashable. According to a 2016 report from the Data & Society Research Institute, about 4% of U.S. internet users have been the victims of revenge porn, and the number rises to 10% for women under the age of 30.
Will users trust Facebook?
In April, Facebook first came up with similar, though less powerful, tools to limit revenge porn. Facebook did something similar in the U.S. with the help of new photo-matching technology to ensure that people are not able to re-share the image previously reported and tagged as revenge porn, notes TechCrunch. The company is also actively banning accounts for revenge porn activities.
However, now the social networking giant is going a step further by asking users to play it safe if they feel they are vulnerable to such attacks. But, it still remains to be seen how confident users are in giving their intimate images and videos to Facebook, considering Facebook’s bad reputation with regards to privacy and consumer trust.
Grant and Facebook, however, are very confident of Facebook’s anti revenge porn tool.
“We have a great deal of comfort that they have chosen the most secure route,” she said.
Before submitting the pictures, users will have to fill out a form in the office of Australia’s eSafety commissioner about their concerns, which is then sent to Facebook. The photos are stored only temporarily before being deleted after Facebook has done making a hash of them.
“The safety and wellbeing of the Facebook community is our top priority,” Facebook’s head of global safety, Antigone Davis told ABC.
