Facebook asks users to send nude photos to combat revenge porn
Fresh off a worldwide apology tour for a major data breach, Facebook is asking its users to send in some of their most intimate photos in a bid to “proactively” combat revenge porn.
The social network on Tuesday announced it will begin testing the new reporting technique in Australia, Canada, the UK and the United States beginning this week.
The pilot program takes aim at non-consensual image sharing on the platform by creating a “hash,” or a unique digital fingerprint of a photo, which can be used to detect any future attempts to share the same image.
Facebook users concerned one of their private photos may be shared online can reach out to several groups the company has partnered with — including the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, and the National Network to End Domestic Violence — to request a form.
They’ll then be asked to upload photos to a “secure, one-time upload link” so it can be reviewed by a “handful of specially trained members of our Community Operations team,” Facebook’s Global Head of Safety Antigone Davis explained.
Once the hash is created, Facebook deletes the image from its servers.
“We store hashes so any time someone tries to upload an image with the same fingerprint, we can block it from appearing on Facebook, Instagram or Messenger,” Davis said.
Facebook already has a feature that allows users to report when an intimate photo has been shared on the site, but this process is an effort to prevent the photo from being shared in the first place.
“It’s demeaning and devastating when someone’s intimate images are shared without their permission, and we want to do everything we can to help victims of this abuse,” Davis said.
According to the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, 82% of revenge porn survivors say the suffer “impairment in social occupational, or other important areas of functioning,” while 49% say they’ve been harassed by those who have seen the image.
Facebook’s announcement regarding its new safety tool came the same day CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before the European Parliament, where he apologized for the wide-reaching Cambridge Analytica Scandal.
The now-shuttered British consulting firm, which worked for President Donald Trump’s campaign, inappropriately obtained the data of at least 87 million users in a bid to influence political elections.
“We haven’t done enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm,” he said Tuesday. “That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections and developers misusing people's information. We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility and that was a mistake, and I’m sorry for it.”
The 33-year-old billionaire was similarly grilled in April by American lawmakers on Facebook’s role in the data mining-scandal, where he parroted a similar apology.
Photos of Zuckerberg testifying before Congress:
