Cracking down

Facebook is taking the right steps to protect privacy

Google created a corporate mantra nearly 20 years ago that may have inspired Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s recent moves to curb the nastiness on his own social media platform: “Don’t be evil.”

After initially disputing the role that “fake news” played in the 2016 election, Mr. Zuckerberg reversed himself and pledged to redouble his company’s efforts to flag and eliminate fake news on its platform.

That belated admission put some wind in Mr. Zuckerberg’s ethical sails. He found himself well situated to address the next symptom of decay on social media — revenge porn.

Revenge porn is the sharing of sexually intimate photos, usually of a former lover or spouse, on sites like Facebook as an act of retribution. In the past, Facebook has knocked the photos off the site when alerted, but the perpetrators would often repost them, making their elimination a game of Whack-a-Mole.

Mr. Zuckerberg recently announced that Facebook possesses AI photo-matching and image recognition technology that can prevent intimate photographs from being reposted once they’ve been identified and banned.

Facebook is home to 2 billion accounts across the globe and would extend the ban to all of its social media platforms, including Instagram and Messenger. That’s a sizable chunk of social media. When victims of revenge porn file complaints with Facebook, they will be able to feel confident that their tormentors can’t easily repost banned photographs. According to the Data & Society Research Institute, young people — mostly women between the ages of 15 to 29 — are most at risk of being threatened with nonconsensual image sharing.

Facebook can’t patrol the entire internet, but deploying technology that keeps its own site tightly patrolled is a good thing. It is often fashionable to knock the internet giant, but when it does something right, it should be congratulated.