Meta Basmi Porn Content Revenge, With Take It Down Tool

JAKARTA - Meta joins Take It Down, a new platform developed by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the United States (US) to help teens remove their own sexual explicit content.

The move comes as parent Facebook and Instagram are under increasing pressure to do more to combat child exploitation.

The new tool, Take It Down, is targeting practice as users post explicit images of someone without their consent to embarrass them in public.

Usually known as revenge porn, which has skyrocketed in recent years on social media, especially among boys.

To use Take It Down, teens under 18, or parents and adults trusted in their names, can file a case on the TakeItDown.NCMEC.org site to install the software to their devices.

Then, users have to choose the images or videos in question, but the site won't save them like most uploads. Instead, Take It Down provides each unique numerical code called hash.

With hash, the system can find content in apps like Facebook and Instagram, including Messenger and direct messages, as long as the image is not encrypted.

Then delete it and prevent it from being reposted. Meta and NCMEC are reportedly also promoting the service so that other apps can also integrate it.

"This problem is very important for Meta for a very, very long time as the damage is severe in the context of teens or adults," said Meta's global security director, Antigone Davis.

"It can damage their reputation and family relationship, and put them in a very vulnerable position. It is important for us to find tools like this to help them regain control of the very difficult and devastating situation."

The effort was fully funded by Meta and built from a similar platform launched in 2021 along with more than 70 NGOs called StopNCII. The goal is to prevent pornography of revenge among adults.

Nearly a year and a half of the tool only came after Meta was criticized by US Senators about the impact of its app on teenage users, as quoted by CNN International, Tuesday, February 28.

The criticism refers to an explosive report indicating the company is aware that both Instagram and Facebook can have a toxic effect on teenage girls.

Although the company has launched several new tools and protections since then, some experts say it will take too long and there is still a lot to do.