Facebook is making a feature to block, before uploading, videos and photos with explicit sex scenes: to do so it uses images of users
Facebook is experimenting with new technologies to help victims of revenge porn. The revenge porn consists in publishing explicit photos and videos or sexual acts for revenge by the ex-partner, of course without the consent of the victim.
At the moment the new algorithms designed to block revenge porn posts are being tested in Australia but soon Facebook will release these functions worldwide. The developers of the famous social media have confessed that they were inspired by other anti-harassment filters to create this new feature. In particular, the algorithm was designed starting from the parental control system already present on Facebook and other Internet services such as Google, Twitter or Instagram. The feature designed against revenge porn is based on a database of encrypted files.
Algorithm to stop revenge porn
Thanks to machine learning, Facebook's algorithm creates a series of filters on the photos that can be posted. If an image that a user tries to upload is identified as a sensitive photo for another person in revenge porn the upload will not be completed. And it will be impossible for the user to post this photo and share it with their network on social. The new anti-harassment feature does not only act on new posts on the Facebook wall. The algorithm works also on Messenger. In this way, it will be impossible to spread sensitive photos and videos. The peculiar aspect is that to build its database for machine learning Facebook used the same photos that malicious people have tried to upload to the social media over the years. In addition to recently "blocked" photos, the database is also composed of images reported by users themselves and identified as revenge porn attempts. Facebook has stressed that this database is not saved anywhere and that those photos are used exclusively for the automatic learning of the algorithm and will never be reused. Moreover, in Australia Facebook has also started a collaboration with the Postal Police. Following a blocked photo, the victim is notified by the social media so that they can file a complaint against the user who tried to publish sensitive photos and videos without their knowledge.