Facebook Anti-Revenge Porn System: Send Yourself Nude Photos
The fake news problem that has plagued social networking services like Facebook and Twitter definitely has severe impact on a global scale. But the social media problem christened "revenge porn" is perhaps even more devastating as it happens on a deeply personal level. Tech companies, as well as authorities, have been thinking of ways to curb the problem, because simply telling teens, or even grownups, not to do something is totally ineffective. Facebook has come up with perhaps the most curious technology-based solution of all, which involves sending yourself your own nude photos on Facebook Messenger.
Facebook, at least in Australia, is developing a new system that will prevent your nudes from being uploaded on Facebook, whether by yourself or, more importantly, by others without your consent. But Facebook can't automagically know if you're uploading a nude photo or just you in a skin-tight, flesh-colored suit. So it needs your help to feed and inform its artificial intelligence by indirectly giving it your nude photos to analyze.
What you do is to send yourself nude photos of yourself on Facebook Messenger. Australian e-Safety Commissioner Julie Imman Grant likens it to sending yourself an email But, of course, so much safer and more secure because you're doing it on Facebook Messenger.
Facebook doesn't look at the image, well at least no one at Facebook does (or should). Instead, it uses its artificial intelligence and computer vision to create a digital fingerprint of that nude so that it would block any attempt to upload that image on Facebook at a later date. It doesn't exactly suddenly know what you look like underneath layers of clothes so that will only work for that single photo. If you worry about your other dozen nudes still ending up on Facebook, you'll have to all send them to yourself.
Absurd as it may sound, social networks and governments are somewhat running out of options to combat the rise of this unsavory trend. Since people can't exactly be trusted to follow advice to be careful who you send your nudes to (or not to send them at all), a more automated system is probably the only option. Hopefully you won't mistakenly send those nudes to other people instead of just to yourself.
VIA: ABC News