Even if "
revenge porn
" is punishable by two years' imprisonment and a fine of 60,000 euros, some do not hesitate to publish pornographic content to take revenge on a person and to humiliate him.
In order to curb this scourge, the Meta group is supporting a new tool to prevent intimate images or videos from being uploaded to Facebook, Instagram or other future partner platforms.
UK-based Revenge Porn Helpline, with help from Meta, developed the StopNCII.org site, which stands for "
Stop Non-Consensual Intimate Pictures
."
This site is only accessible to adults.
About fifty global partners, specialized in image-based abuse, online security and women's rights are supporting this project.
Among them is the French feminist association En avant tout (s).
"It's a huge step forward"
Concretely, when a person fears that his intimate images will be published on the internet by a third party, he can create a file on StopNCII.org. In this file, the person deposits their compromising photos or videos, which never leave their computer or their smartphone. These images are converted into unique digital fingerprints, called “
hashes
”. It is this data that is transmitted to participating companies, such as Facebook and Instagram.
The technique of hashing consists of converting an image into a unique signature.
The latter is made up of a series of numbers and letters that correspond to the visible information.
In a pictorial way, the photo loses a large part of the information it contains but it remains sufficient to distinguish it from another.
In these examples, the photos of these paintings are simplified as much as possible, but they are nevertheless dissociable, like the signatures attributed to them.
StopNCII only transmits hashes to partner platforms.
Here, both tables are simplified as much as possible, such as the information contained in their unique signatures.
By Unique Nitrogen - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56967942
For their part, the platforms use hash matching technology, that is to say, they check whether content with the same digital signature has been uploaded to their site. If there is a match, the moderators will directly remove the post and block further attempts to download that content.
“
This is a huge step forward,
” says Sophie Mortimer, head of the Revenge Porn hotline at SWGfL, an internet security organization.
“
The key is to put that control over content back in the hands of those directly affected by this problem, so that they aren't left to the whims of an author threatening to share
” their intimate photos, she explains.
Revenge Porn Helpline will however have to expand the number of its industrial partners for its tool to be truly effective.
Revenge porn content circulates largely on Snapchat, TikTok, but also on pornographic sites.
