Facebook's attempted 'revenge porn' solution: Trust us with your nude pics
Social networking giant Facebook is trialing a unique and likely controversial solution for the internet's "revenge porn" problem -- asking some users to send themselves their own naked images via Facebook Messenger, so the company's algorithms can anonymously scan and block sharing of those pics in the future.
Facebook's efforts are being spearheaded in Australia with the aid of the eSafety Office, which is looking to curb "image-based abuse" before it even occurs. In an interview with ABC News, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said people who are worried their private photos may be shared on Instagram or Facebook can contact her office, and they may be asked to send the images to themselves on Facebook Messenger.
"It would be like sending yourself your image in email, but obviously this is a much safer, secure end-to-end way of sending the image without sending through the ether," Inman Grant said.
By sending the image through Facebook's servers, the company's artificial intelligence and photo matching technologies are said to be able to create a digital fingerprint for racy images, without actually saving the picture itself.
A Facebook official told ABC that four countries are currently testing the "industry-first" pilot.
So-called "revenge porn," typically in reference to images captured consensually in a relationship but shared by a vengeful ex after a breakup, has become a major problem on the internet, further exacerbated by social networking sites that make it easy to disseminate and shame. Often by the time the victim is able to have the image removed, the damage has already been done.
A study published in late 2016 by the Data & Society Research Institute found that one in 25 Americans were a victim of "revenge porn." The most popular target is younger women, where one in 10 under the age of 30 have experienced threats of nonconsensual image sharing.
Apple has had its own hurdles in addressing the problem, as dozens of celebrities who were victims of iCloud account hacking have had private photos shared across the internet. Though Apple's own security was not to blame, users showed poor password practices combined with automatic uploads of images to the iCloud Photo Library, putting sensitive images on the web in a vulnerable fashion.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation continues to look into the so-called "Celebgate" iCloud hacking scandal, and to date three people have been charged with the crimes committed. Two of them have already been found guilty and sentenced to prison.
Facebook's efforts are being spearheaded in Australia with the aid of the eSafety Office, which is looking to curb "image-based abuse" before it even occurs. In an interview with ABC News, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said people who are worried their private photos may be shared on Instagram or Facebook can contact her office, and they may be asked to send the images to themselves on Facebook Messenger.
"It would be like sending yourself your image in email, but obviously this is a much safer, secure end-to-end way of sending the image without sending through the ether," Inman Grant said.
By sending the image through Facebook's servers, the company's artificial intelligence and photo matching technologies are said to be able to create a digital fingerprint for racy images, without actually saving the picture itself.
A Facebook official told ABC that four countries are currently testing the "industry-first" pilot.
So-called "revenge porn," typically in reference to images captured consensually in a relationship but shared by a vengeful ex after a breakup, has become a major problem on the internet, further exacerbated by social networking sites that make it easy to disseminate and shame. Often by the time the victim is able to have the image removed, the damage has already been done.
A study published in late 2016 by the Data & Society Research Institute found that one in 25 Americans were a victim of "revenge porn." The most popular target is younger women, where one in 10 under the age of 30 have experienced threats of nonconsensual image sharing.
Apple has had its own hurdles in addressing the problem, as dozens of celebrities who were victims of iCloud account hacking have had private photos shared across the internet. Though Apple's own security was not to blame, users showed poor password practices combined with automatic uploads of images to the iCloud Photo Library, putting sensitive images on the web in a vulnerable fashion.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation continues to look into the so-called "Celebgate" iCloud hacking scandal, and to date three people have been charged with the crimes committed. Two of them have already been found guilty and sentenced to prison.
Comments
Then when a disgruntled employee or hacker hacks their server, your nude pictures are going to be released to the world.
I don't get the whole sexting thing. Surely young people these days are clued up on how the internet works and putting something online is pretty much irreversible, regardless of where and to whom they sent it, and whether or not it was "meant to be private", as if there is such a thing.
As for this story, I think it's pretty clear that anyone who would post "revenge porn" to hurt someone else is a despicable human being. Anyone here who disagrees with that basic assessment can feel free to let me know and get a swift ban.
I think abusing your power is despicable. I research gender inequality daily and see men treated like sh** in public, in law, in relationships, online, everywhere. I see comments like yours where it’s only bad because the “victim” is a female who did something first to hurt a man.
I won’t disclose my gender but it’s not fair to attack one gender while giving a pass to the other for whatever reason.
I did, however, specify a gender in the story, simply noting that younger women under the age of 30 are by far the most likely to be victims of "revenge porn." That's a fact backed by statistics.
In no way did I ever, at any point, suggest that "revenge porn" is somehow less of a crime if a woman were to do it to a man. Not sure where you got that idea.
You could add a thing to the Facebook or Messenger app that reads a photo, makes a hash (the "signature" as described by the article), and then sends that string back to Facebook. Building that hash in the phone is child's play, no need for the pix to ever reach the server.
Keeping Facebook honest is easy enough. Tons of folks will be doing packet scanning on their home routers; even over SSL it would be obvious when the app is sending a multi-megabyte JPEG instead of a 2kb hash string.
On the UI side, you surface this feature as some kind of "safety" button, the same way Chrome and Safari have their winkingly named "incognito mode."
("By sending the image through Facebook's servers, the company's artificial intelligence and photo matching technologies are said to be able to create a digital fingerprint for racy images, without actually saving the picture itself." It's funny how they're playing this off as some kind of high tech thing, though. Calculating similarity between two differently hashed images isn't trivial but it's not rocket science either.)
I know the coders at both Google and Facebook have an unnatural trust in their code, which is why Facebook think's it's completely rational and socially acceptable to ask its members to send nude photos of themselves to Facebook for machine learning. You think Apple would ever do something so tone-deaf and bone-headed?
I also don't think Google should be policing AppleInsider unless they want to sell you their policing services as some kind of API you can use to evaluate posted comments as they are posted (and not after the fact). But, as I said, I don't trust any AI (artificial intelligence) to do this with enough nuance as to be useful. As far as I'm concerned, Google wasn't deputized to be the Internet Police, and their threats should not create a chilling effect on smaller websites, but unfortunately, that appears to be the case here. I am fully aware of sites' need to play nice with Google.
House-rules is fine, but I’m interested in what the Google concern is.
They don’t allow political discussion either.
https://forums.appleinsider.com/discussion/202133/were-removing-political-outsider
You wouldn't believe the number of emails and tweets we receive from people who are outraged (usually incorrectly saying something about us stifling free speech) when they see that we have turned off comments on a political article. I think these people have some sort of vision of AppleInsider as being owned by a mega corporation, with a big headquarters and a huge staff and tens of millions of dollars backing us. That's just not the case.
The truth is, we have a small staff, we do the best we can, and we can't spend our time policing the forums. That's really all there is to it — no agenda and no conspiracy at play.
Because people will use this for any picture they want to see blocked, not just nude pictures of themselves..
Don't like Obama? Have ask his pictures blocked.. Don't like Taylor Swift? Get her banned..
All nice ideas in theory if people use it in good faith.. Reality is far less benevolent unfortunately..
You got a warning about a four year old thread where someone posted graphic images. So, that's nonsense. It was an excuse to delete PoliticalOutsider, which had been around for 15+ years. You now post stories with some political content and disallow comments because some people engage in ad hominem attacks. This doesn't foster discussion. It doesn't help your audience engage. AI was once a thriving community for Apple rumors, products, news, information and unrelated discussion. It's now nothing but a news site. Anyone here as long as I have been knows exactly what I'm talking about.
Yeah, sending nudes to Facebook makes tons of sense. I mean, seriously. I'm not exactly a privacy freak, but you want to send naked pictures of yourself to a media giant? This might be the single dumbest idea ever in technology.
The forums were well moderated years ago...by members with moderator privileges. What you've done now is stifle discussion. And while I'm sure the staff is small, AI is indeed acting like a corporate conglomerate. "Corporate" is the perfect word. There was a time that the only things ever taken down were the result of Cease and Desist letters from Apple. Now Google sends you a nasty e-mail and you delete an entire forum with hundreds of thousands of replies.