Facebook rolling out new tools to keep users safe from revenge porn

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook is rolling out a new set of tools to combat revenge porn, a type of online harassment that a Data & Society survey says affects one in 25 Americans.

The social media giant said in a blog post Wednesday that once a revenge-porn picture is reported and deleted, new artificial intelligence photo-matching technologies are used to prevent that same image from being published on Facebook Messenger and Instagram, international media reported.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page, “We're focused on building a community that keeps people safe. That means building technology and AI tools to prevent harm.



Today we're rolling out new tools to prevent "revenge porn" from being shared on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram”.

He further said, “Revenge porn is any intimate photo shared without permission. It's wrong, it's hurtful, and if you report it to us, we will now use AI and image recognition to prevent it from being shared across all of our platforms”.

Given that Facebook is creeping up on two billion global users, it's not a surprise the tech company wanted to initiate a crackdown on the ways in which it serves as an echo chamber of false or harmful information.

Facebook recently started flagging so-called "disputed news" items that appear on its platform after concerns were raised about the website's role in inadvertently helping proliferating fake news among its users.

The tools and new protocols were designed by Facebook through a partnership with safety experts and advocacy organizations, including the National Network to End Domestic Violence, Center for Social Research, the Revenge Porn Helpline (UK) and the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative.