SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Facebook to Fight Revenge Porn by Letting Potential Victims Upload Nudes in Advance
Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
This new protection system works similar to the anti-child-porn detection systems in use at Facebook, and other social media giants like Google, Twitter, Instagram, and others.
It works on a database of file hashes, a cryptographic signature computed for each file.
Facebook says that once an abuser tries to upload an image marked as "revenge porn" in its database, its system will block the upload process. This will work for images shared on the main Facebook service, but also for images shared privately via Messenger, Facebook's IM app. Potential victims will need to upload nude photos of themselves
The weird thing is that in order to build a database of "revenge porn" file hashes, Facebook will rely on potential victims uploading a copy of the nude photo in advance.
This process involves the victim sending a copy of the nude photo to his own account, via Facebook Messenger. This implies uploading a copy of the nude photo on Facebook Messenger, the very same act the victim is trying to prevent.
The victim can then report the photo to Facebook, which will create a hash of the image that the social network will use to block further uploads of the same photo.
This is possible because in April this year, Facebook modified its image reporting process to take into account images showing "revenge porn" acts.
Facebook says it's not storing a copy of the photo, but only computing the file's hash and adding it to its database of revenge porn imagery.
Victims who fear that former or current partners may upload a nude photo online can pro-actively take this step to block the image from ever being uploaded on Facebook and shared among friends.
We won't be doing this. I don't even want to see hashes of you folks naked.
Facebook asks Australians to send nude photos, for safety
"Worried that an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend might post your intimate photos on the internet? Facebook says it has a solution – as long as you'll hand over the photos first.
The social media giant recently announced its new plan to combat "revenge porn," when individuals post nude photos online without the consent of the subject." http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/11/08/facebook-says-it-needs-your-explicit-photos-to-combat-revenge-porn.html
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday November 10 2017, @06:10PM (5 children)
They want you to upload your nude pictures, so they can create hashes of the pictures and use these for comparing to photos your associates may upload? They don't see the potential for abuse here? Worse, how does it work with under-age people? It's not like they're immune to this, but this creates a giant liability for FB if they're storing this material.
Here's a better idea: they give you a program you run on *your* computer, and you use that with your nude photos to calculate the hashes. Then you send those hashes to Facebook. This way, you know that the only thing FB has is just a bunch of hashes, not your actual nude photos. The main problem with this is verifying that FB's program actually does only what it claims, and doesn't upload the photos themselves to FB, but independent researchers can easily verify that with Wireshark (plus, if you have a bunch of photos, or even just a few videos, the upload time for those is orders of magnitude greater than some hashes, and should be immediately noticeable).
I guess this idea is a non-starter because no one (esp. Facebook users) wants to run any native application software any more, and wants everything to be done in the web browser. But even here, this stuff could be done client-side in Javascript.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday November 10 2017, @06:12PM (2 children)
How about just not using Facebook? Oh, right, how could I forget, people are vain idiots.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 10 2017, @07:27PM (1 child)
The problem with that is that by definition revenge porn is posted by somebody other than the target. So, if the target doesn't have a FB account, it just means fewer "friends" see it. But strangers might see it and most people have friends that are on FB, so those people can see as well.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday November 10 2017, @09:53PM
If I suspected that I were a victim of revenge porn, I'd browse /b/ before I'd browse Facebook.
Also, I have an old story I posted on Slashdot and may have posted here. Pardon if I already posted it here. Anyway, when I was a freshman in high school, a disgruntled ex-boyfriend of a 16 year old student went through the trouble to enlarge a photo of his ex girlfriend topless (including face) and run off a shit-ton of copies of it, then at night spread those "leaflets" all over the campus. They were everywhere - tucked in tree branches, hidden under trash cans, stuffed into mailboxes, and generally all over the ground everywhere. The administration and other staff were still finding and picking up copies well into the afternoon after an all-day effort.
No cops were called, there were no mentions of "child porn." This was back in the day when anything with a set of tits wasn't considered "child porn."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 10 2017, @06:17PM
Your mention of abuse made me think of something: see a meme you don't like? Label it "revenge porn".
I guess that is you you are supposed to submit the files ahead of time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 10 2017, @06:27PM
But then how would Zuckerberg get copies?