Facebook wants your naked photos to stop revenge porn
bbc.co.ukDiscussion from 7 months ago (over 50 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15648080
FB wants every detail about everything your life, and wants to only share rosy PR in return. That part isn't news.
What's worth repeating is how tone-deaf and stupid this is. Decision-makers inside FB are living in a bubble crazy and arrogant enough to make them think this is something to propose to the world.
It is a technical bandaid that could theoretically work if you ignore the real people inhabiting the real world who would be using it. Reminds me, in a different way, of folks talking about how printing PGP (then) hashes on business cards was a workable fix for the web-of-trust, only throw in nudie pics, even more nerd-arrogance and FB's brazen, repeated abuses of trust.
When FB offers to act as my agent, with a contract including teeth for improper disclosure of confidential information, they will be approaching Saul Goodman levels of trustability.
How can anyone with an ounce of common sense not immediately dismiss this as totally preposterous? It's completely and utterly nuts! Anyone in management at FB considering this a reasonable initiative has surely lost all perspective on the right way to solve what I'm sure is - sadly - a genuine and serious problem.
This is old: nowadays, to create revenge porn, someone can just grab your face photos and use deepfakes.
i.e. facebook doesn't need naked photos to stop revenge porn, just use photos of your face, which they already have
i.e. photo of your face appears on fb/instagram/etc in an unlikely place? auto-crop it to just that body and ask you if you approve. even better, offer a page listing "your photos that appear on other people's feeds and profiles". The algorithm would need to be conservative (i.e. err on the side of not-matching) to avoid leaking other peoples' naked pics to you. To thwart uploading previously-recorded photos/video, use the same tech as Face ID.
This would also be an excellent positive-PR partnership opportunity between Facebook, Google, Tinder, and the other top social media and dating sites.
This would be a useful service if their system could detect signs of skin cancer.
In terms of squelching revenge porn, I do not see how this would remove anything from non facebook servers. Is 4chan going to integrate with this? Are they really only using hashing? Simple hash checks are negated with trivial effort.
If they are just hashes, why are users uploading anything beyond a hash? Example: virustotal [0] can get the hash of a file using javascript rather than uploading the file. Is this to see that the file is really porn?
Well, imagine how much revenge porn is being shared on Facebook and their other social networks because that's where the victim is.
You don't need global buy-in for it to be useful. Raising the barrier can be useful.
The bullies have to not just find another video host, but be bothered to actually do it.
Watching my friend's little brother wonder how to do anything out of the same three Android apps he uses daily, I've become convinced that Facebook's measure will be effective enough.
I agree in principal with what you are saying. There are certainly cases inside of FB that this could help, assuming they are not just doing simple hashing.
In my opinion, I believe they should extend their service via an API or hash database that could be used by other sites to reduce some of the group raids on FB accounts and other social media sites to improve the effectiveness of this initiative. Imagine if CloudFlare were to uptake this database and show what sites were sharing a particular file, or even allow website admins to filter such images.
It's not just hashes of the raw bytes of the photos. More likely something like PhotoDNA[1] that's already used for tracking child porn.
That would be great. Are there any links that suggest Facebook is using this?
I doubt it is Simple file level Hashing
MS Pioneered tech for Child Porn that looks at the actual photo and hashes parts of the file, PhotoID, that makes is more robot than a simple file hash, which ML I am sure this has improved alot in the decades it was first released
However I agree that is unlikely to curb Revenge Porn...
The technique is called fuzzy hashing
Upload your own porn to Facebook, hilarious! Zuckerberg really hasn't changed and he still believes his users are dumb fucks.
Knowing real Facebook, I would imagine at minimum they will be extracting tattoos from these photos and sharing it with FBI/LEs of all sorts. AS it turns out many criminal cases are being solved because someone flashed their tattoo.
So 10 years from now Zuck will be on the road apologizing that they shared your naked photos/tattoos with LEs but you know thats for the common good so its allright. But definitely we will do better lol :)
Here Together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4zd7X98eOs
Edit: its beyond hilarious that the upload above has comments section disabled LOL! Social network not so much LOL
Will the hash take into account that some body parts may change shape compared to the sample photo Facebook asks us ?
No, because you're uploading the exact photo you want blocked. You aren't uploading a random arbitrary photo of yourself.
A little too ambitious.
I wonder what's their real agenda with these photos. You can never take what Facebook says at face value. Just like when they say they're only building shadow profiles on you for security purposes.
For all its flaws, I don't think that it's likely that FB would move into the blackmail space.
Are you sure you want to delete your account?
These friends will miss you. ... We might have to start serving them the images you uploaded instead, or they'll get lonely!
Forget their intentional use, what about the unintentional use?
"We're terribly sorry this database of photos submitted to prevent revenge porn was accidentally made public. We have fixed the security hole which made this possible, but still intend to keep and expand the database which was exposed. Thank you for your understanding and participation."
Or, imagine a new advertising filter popping up some new advertisements for you: "Have genital warts? Use our cream to make them go away!"
There is already plenty of porn on the internet, why do they need more?
Given what facebook is and has done, why wouldn't you be suspicious that there is a hidden reason that is beneficial to facebook.
I can see a new zuck quote now... 'i asked them for nudes and those idiots just gave them to me'
> Given what facebook is and has done, why wouldn't you be suspicious that there is a hidden reason that is beneficial to facebook.
Facebook is in the middle of a PR disaster which sank their stock price because they gave away data to companies that users agreed to give away. Nude photos are probably more sensitive to people than their social security number and bank information -- especially to younger people.
The public outrage that would follow if anything nefarious was happening to voluntarily sent nude photos would be tantamount to destruction of the company. It's not hyperbole -- the whole point of submitting photos to stop revenge porn is to stop the spread of the photos. Anything else would contravene that trust and spark moral hostility.