If you’re worried about nudes or other intimate images circulating on social media, Facebook has a solution. Send them copies.
The social media service, which just this year settled a privacy lawsuit for using photo face-tagging and other biometric data without permission, is now asking users to trust it and take a bigger risk. It has partnered with a UK based nonprofit called Revenge Porn Helpline. The goal is to build a tool to prevent intimate images from being uploaded without consent to Facebook, Instagram and other participating platforms.
The tool launched Thursday, and asks users to submit the images to a central, global website called StopNCII.org, which stands for “Stop Non-Consensual Intimate Images.”
“It’s a massive step forward,” said Sophie Mortimer, the helpline’s manager, speaking to NBC News. “The key for me is about putting this control over content back into the hands of people directly affected by this issue so they are not just left at the whims of a perpetrator threatening to share it.”
The submission process requires StopNCII.org to ask for confirmation that they are in an image. The photos or videos will then be converted into unique digital fingerprints which will be given to participating companies, starting with Facebook and Instagram.
StopNCII.org will not have access to or store copies of the original images. Instead, the images will be converted to hashes in users’ browsers, and StopNCII.org will get only the hashed copies.
Facebook tried such a program before. In its 2017 pilot, the imageswere reviewed by human moderators at the point of submission and converted into hashes. That raised privacy issues.
People who submit material to the platform can also track their cases in real time and withdraw their participation at any point.
The tool is available only in English at launch.
