Teenagers can now delete previously uploaded “naked,” “partially naked,” or “sexually explicit” photos from Facebook and Instagram thanks to a new tool from Meta.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is the organization behind the new “Take It Down” tool that Meta has developed.
Teenagers or their parents can send films or photographs anonymously to Take It Down, a free service, if they are concerned that they may be shared online or that they have already been.
Such images can be uploaded to a web-based application, which will hash them and send them to NCMEC and share them with platforms. Hash-matching technology will be used by the social media platforms to identify and prevent any efforts to upload the original photographs.
Yubo, OnlyFans, and Mindgeek-owned Pornhub are the other collaborating platforms in addition to Facebook and Instagram.
The new technology from Meta was created to address the growing issue of “sextortion,” in which young people are intimidated or tricked into sharing intimate photographs with another person online, then harassed or blackmailed with the danger of having those images made public.
While some perpetrators are motivated by money, others are driven to coax out even more explicit photographs from the child.
Take It Down hashes the images in the browser, so they don’t leave the device of the child or parent. If the extorter tries to upload the original images, the platform’s hash-matching technology will detect a match and send the newly uploaded image to a content moderator to review.
