Facebook has come up with a solution to tackle revenge porn that seems crazy and counter-intuitive at first but once you settle down you begin to see how it could work.
What is revenge pornography?
The posting of revealing or sexually explicit images or videos of a person on the Internet without their consent where people can share or download. This revenge porn is prevalent in Zimbabwe too, especially on WhatsApp in Zimbabwe. To be frank I think the H-Metro contributed to the problem. In Uganda they commissioned a porn detection machine to tackle the same problem.
Facebook’s reasoning
The problem is a global one and Facebook has come up with a controversial plan. Their reasoning is that most times the victims of revenge porn know the perpetrators as these are usually former partners. Victims owing to hacking are much fewer.
When you know that someone, a former partner in this case, is in possession of revealing pictures of you and are not sure as to their intentions with those pictures Facebook would like to help.
Facebook’s plan
Be proactive. Make a preemptive strike and upload those images to Messenger first. Facebook will then hash the images or videos giving them a digital footprint. Facebook, through its photo and face matching algorithms and AI-based technologies will be on the look out for those images, preventing their upload or sharing in the future.
In simpler terms, you give Facebook a media file and you say please prevent anyone from ever posting or sharing this file on your platform in the future.
So as mentioned you will only be required to upload the images to Messenger and not post them on your wall as that would be stupidly counter-intuitive.
Facebook is testing the defense strategy in Australia in collaboration with the Australian government.
Concerns
Facebook assures us that they will not be storing the image but just the link as they are using a hashing system. However as the strategy is still in testing, it could be easy to trick the system and you would have shot yourself in the foot if the hacker released the images to the public.
Even when the strategy is out of testing and is released to everyone globally there is no guarantee that the system won’t be hacked. We have seen machine vision systems hacked before using various methods.
Even if no one is able to hack the system to get your stored links and images, someone in possession of your nudes (that former partner) might still be able to upload the images to Facebook. There are digital manipulations that can be done to make the machine think it’s a different image to what it is.
Personally I would not want any of my nudes online, in Facebook’s hands or not.
What do you think about this revenge porn defense? Would you use such a defense plan if it ever released globally? Let us know in the comments below.
8 comments
Those images will be stored somewhere, even temporarily. They have to reside somewhere whilst being “hashed”. If FB gets hacked, they’ll just say sorry and end it at that.
William and Nigel seem to be loving the idea of posting themselves nude from the way they are smilling on that pic
LOL, more like the image we saw on the phone that had us over the moon
this scam was last used 20 years ago after it stopped working..hackers are found in the deep web and other hacking forums nt Techzim
this is actually stupid at the end of the day. jus tell …whats the need of actually having them in the first place.
The Situation in Our country needs prayers lets invite the lord to take care of all that is taking place.
Pray my brother. Please do pray. If that’s the only thing you are capable of doing please do
Don’t take nude pictures capish
What if someone hacks my facebook, will they be able to see my nudes i sent to facebook
Bad idea, just block all nudes from facebook seems a better solution
Sounds like one bad attempt but not all hackers do hacks to hurt people or even to make money, like the one my British friend introduced to me which i contacted his email cyberwizard.140gmailcom he is so professional and unselfish firstly he proves to you he is not a cheat by working a sample job that you confirm first then you are 100% sure he can do your work without being cheated. He never ask for payment first, he Shows proof works first he is just great.