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Been blackmailed with revenge porn? Here’s how Facebook plans to fight it

Social media giant Facebook is all geared up to fight revenge porn!

Revenge porn is one of the most insidious issues being faced by the modern society. It not only invades privacy but is also derogatory to the individual, subjecting him/her to unnecessary ridicule by social media. Recent times have witnessed an increase in such incidents, wherein the celebrities and the commoners alike are being ridiculed on the web. To safeguard the Facebook community and curb this vicious practice, Facebook has announced a set of measures.

Users can now use the ‘Report’ option that appears on the drop-down menu next to a post to report any intimate image on Facebook that looks like that it has been shared without permission. Once the image has been flagged, Facebook would use its photo-matching technologies to prevent the image being shared on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram.

This technology would not only help in detecting such explicit content but also stop users from sharing the image while informing them about the violation.

However, the company is not entirely relying on its AI to do the job. It has also deployed a special team to review the image and remove it if it violates its policies. However, if an image has been taken down in error, the company is offering an ‘appeals process’ to restore the image.

Apart from this, Facebook has also released ‘a guide specific to Facebook’ to help the Facebook community to understand the issue and their rights better.

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Facebook has worked with a number of civil rights and data security organisations including Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, National Network to End Domestic Violence, Center for Social Research and the Revenge Porn Helpline (UK) to crack down on this technique.