Facebook Get Involved With Revenge Porn, Employs New Photo-Matching Method

Although it is no longer an epidemic in the same scale as it was a few years ago, revenge porn is still a huge problem within the internet community. Facebook is one of the biggest platforms to actually provide the perpetrators with a stage with which to commit these heinous acts. As such, it is now employing a new method to curb the spread of inappropriate images and videos spread by hateful individuals.

The new method in question is a photo-matching technology that will basically find images that are similar or the same as ones that were already shared, Reuters reports. This means that any image that was already banned by Facebook will no longer be shared on the social media platform.

With that said, this new system likely won’t prevent entirely new photos or videos from being shared by spurned lovers who want to cause pain. As such, there is still a huge chance that people will fall victim to revenge porn if they have never been before.

Revenge porn is a practice that disproportionately affects women as well, according to the publication, which also makes this a gender issue. In a post on Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg assures his users that once the image has been flagged and removed, it will never return to the social network.

“Revenge porn is any intimate photo shared without permission,” the post reads. “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.”

The trend of sharing private images of women without their permission, in general, has been attracting considerable attention from both the media and the public recently. The most recent scandal involving US Marines sharing nude pictures of female recruits and soldiers added a ton of gasoline to the flames, igniting it into a firestorm.