Facebook on Wednesday announced a new plan to fight revenge porn, a term coined to describe the practice of sharing private pictures of a person online without their permission. The company revealed that it’ll use a variety of measures to put a stop to revenge porn across its online properties, including Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram. But the plan does have one flaw.
Facebook said that starting Wednesday, people who may find themselves at the center of revenge porn campaigns will be able to report the content to Facebook.
Once that’s done, “specially trained representatives” will review the image and remove it if it violates the Community Standards. Facebook will also disable the account for sharing images without permission “in most cases.”
Facebook will go one step further to purge these images from Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram, using photo-matching technologies. That should put a stop to re-shares coming from third parties.
The company says the tools were developed in partnership with safety experts, and Facebook partnered up with safety organizations to offer other resources to victims.
The problem with the system is that, while it’s great in theory, it won’t work by default. Someone still has to report that intimate images were shared. It’s unclear what happens if such images were to be shared online in private groups inside Facebook, Messenger, or Instagram.
It goes without saying that Facebook will only stop revenge porn from being shared inside its own apps. Once an image is online and accessible to users, it can soon land in various other places, which our out of Facebook’s reach.
Even so, this is a step in the right direction. Facebook partnered with the National Network to End Domestic Violence, Center for Social Research, the Revenge Porn Helpline (UK), and the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative for this new program.
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), who’s looking to push legislation against the dissemination of revenge porn, praised Facebook’s initiative.
“These new tools are a huge advancement in combatting non-consensual pornography, and I applaud Facebook for their dedication in addressing this insidious issue, which impacts the lives of individuals and their loved ones across the country and around the world,” Speier said, according to The Hill.
