Facebook’s ‘photoDNA’ technology to slacken your intimate photos

Diminish in intensity even if you are experiencing blackmail over a nude image or if someone is threatening to expose your intimate photos; as here comes the “photoDNA” technology of Facebook.

To battle against “revenge porn,” the social media giant Facebook comes up with a unique idea of heartening Australian users to submit their nude photos to a pilot project.

Designed to avert intimate images from being shared without consent, the projects lend a hand to those adults who have shared nude or sexually explicit photos online and are worried about the unauthorised distribution.

They can further, report images to the Australian government’s eSafety Commission.

Assuring their security, the users need to send the photos to them via Messenger, a process that allows Facebook to “hash” them, creating a unique digital fingerprint.

This specific identifier is then used to obstruct any further distribution on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger as a pre-emptive strike against revenge porn, a common method of abuse and exploitation online.

The usage of image-matching technology to prevent non- consensual intimate images from being shared,” said Antigone Davis, Facebook’s head of global safety.

A Facebook spokesman said Britain, Canada and the United States are also expected to take part in the project.

It eliminates power from the perpetrator, ostensibly trying to amplify the humiliation of the victim amongst friends, family and colleagues,” eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant.

If everything goes successful, the Facebook trial should be extended to other online platforms said Inman Grant.

“The precedent already exists for the sharing of child exploitation images and countering violent extremism online, and by extending to image-based abuse we are taking the burden off the victims to report to multiple online platforms,” she said.

Australia is among world leaders in efforts to combat revenge porn.
Its eSafety Commission launched an online portal last month, allowing victims to report cases where their photos have been shared on the internet without consent. The commission then works with websites and search engines to have them removed.

The suffrage of image-based abuse is spreading globally. A recent survey by the commission revealed one in five women in Australia aged 18-45 put up with Facebook and its Messenger app accounting for 53 percent of revenge porn, followed by Snapchat at 11 percent and Instagram at four percent.

The “mass scale” prey to abusive behaviour includes both men and women.

The deployment of the technology is no distrust widening the Facebook ecosystem.