and they are the newest technology companies whose goal is to reduce the spread of revenge pornography: intimate images and videos shared without the consent of the subject. They have partnered with (Stop Non-Consensual Intimate Image Abuse), which hosts a tool developed in collaboration with . TikTok, Bumble, Facebook, and Instagram will detect and block any image that is included in the StopNCII.org hash bank.
The website allows people to create hashes (unique fingerprints) of images and videos in question. This process takes place on your device. To protect users’ privacy, the actual files are not uploaded to StopNCII.org, just a unique string of letters and numbers.
Hashes submitted to StopNCII.org are shared with the initiative’s partners. If an image or video uploaded to TikTok, Bumble, Facebook, or Instagram matches a corresponding hash and “meets partner policy requirements,” the file will be sent to the platform’s moderation team. If the moderators find that the image violates the rules of their platform, they will remove it. The other partner platforms will also block the image from being shared.
The tool has been and more than 12,000 people have created cases to prevent the sharing of intimate videos and images without consent. Users have created over 40,000 hashes to date. What Notes, Meta partnered with SWGfL, the UK nonprofit behind the Revenge Porn Helpline, to develop StopNCII.org. SWGfL expects many more platforms to register.
The initiative builds on Meta (then known as Facebook) which started in Australia in 2017 and asked users to upload revenge pornographic images to a Messenger chat with themselves. Meta promised to do it after shredding them, but the approach raised.
TikTok and Bumble join the initiative amid the former and a broader crackdown on revenge porn. The UK, for example, plans to force platforms hosting user-generated content to remove non-consensual intimate images more quickly, as set out in .
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