FACEBOOK HAS TEAMED up with an Australian government agency to trial a new way of preventing sexually explicit images of someone being shared without that person’s consent.
As Facebook also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, the move is a bid to prevent such images being shared across these platforms.
Julie Inman Grant, the country’s e-safety commissioner, told ABC: “We see many scenarios where maybe photos or videos were taken consensually at one point, but there was not any sort of consent to send the images or videos more broadly.”
So how does it work?
The bid to combat revenge porn involves sending a picture of yourself that you may feel could be shared online to… yourself.
Once you get in contact with the e-safety body, they could tell you to send the picture that you feel may be shared online to yourself on Facebook Messenger.
Grant said: “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 it through the ether.
They’re not storing the image. They’re storing the link and using artificial intelligence and other image matching technologies.
So, once you send the photo on Facebook, it will use its technology to create a digital fingerprint or link of that photo.
“So if somebody tried to upload that same image, which would have the same digital footprint or hash value, it will be prevented from being uploaded,” Grant said.
If this programme works correctly, it would stop an ex uploading photos that you had sent, or prevent a hacker from doing the same.
This means they won’t appear on Facebook or Instagram, and can’t be sent via WhatsApp.
The images which you do send are not stored in any database either, Facebook said.
Back home, the Cabinet approved strict new laws designed to tackle the rise of revenge porn towards the end of last year.
Then-Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald said: “Phenomena such as so-called revenge pornography and the publication of voyeuristic material can do serious and lasting harm at the touch of a button, and it is important that we act now to ensure our laws can deal effectively with these challenges.”
Under proposals by the Law Reform Commission, those guilty of sharing explicit images or videos of someone without their consent can be jailed for up to 12 months and fined €5,000 if dealt with at District Court level.
However, those found guilty of more serious forms of online harassment at the Circuit Court can face seven years in jail and unlimited fine.
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