Technology being piloted in Australia will require users to send the images to themselves via messenger
ADVERTISEMENTSocial media giants Facebook are asking users to send naked photographs of themselves to be ‘hashed,’ so that a digital footprint can be created to prevent the same image being re-uploaded to the site.
Revenge porn, the act of making public sexually explicit images of someone without their consent, is a trend that still poses a major problem on the social media site.
Facebook is piloting the technology in Australia alongside a government agency led by e-Safety Commissioner Julia Inman Grant, who told ABC the action would help victims of “image-based abuse” to take back control.
Thanks to the new software they can take action before their pictures are posted to Facebook, Instagram or Messenger.
“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,” Inman Grant said.
How can users submit images?
Users are first required to outline their concerns in a form on the e-safety commissioner’s website, which the commissioner’s office passes on to Facebook.
They are then asked to send any pictures they were concerned about to themselves on the site’s Messenger service.
How does it work?
Once all the information has been transmitted to Facebook, one of their community operations analysts hashes the photographs in order to block future instances from being uploaded or shared.
Facebook said they are only planning to keep images for a short period of time, in line with their privacy policy.
A spokeswoman for the company said it was exploring additional partners and other countries.