program

  Last November, Australian media reported that Facebook was experimenting with a novel idea to combat revenge porn on its platforms. In a pilot program done in cooperation with the government, users would do something that feels ill advised: upload a nude image to Facebook. The idea was that by doing so, Facebook could preempt that specific image from being uploaded to the platform by someone else in the future through technology that can help identify duplicates. The program sparked backlash among Facebook observers and internet users. One cybersecurity expert told Quartz at the time that it was a “horrible idea,” questioning the wisdom of giving such sensitive information to a third party—a sentiment hard to shake after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which revealed just how unsafe user data was on Facebook. Despite the criticism, on May 22, Facebook announced that it was expanding the tests to the US, UK,…