We must Face up to revenge porn issue ..but not in this way

Ever since moving to the States, I have found myself frequently saying “you just couldn’t make that up”. It is something I have repeated daily since Donald Trump was elected to the White House.

This week I stumbled on something even the most imaginative of Hollywood scriptwriters would struggle to invent.

Facebook is trialling a programme in which someone afraid of becoming a revenge porn victim is asked to send the nude pictures of themselves to the site so they can block them.

The company will then use image recognition technology to identify individual photos and stop the same pics being uploaded by a jilted lover.

Employees will initially view the unedited shots before blurring them and creating a “digital fingerprint”. What planet do these guys live on? If Facebook were firefighters they’d ditch water for petrol.

It is absurd they believe someone living in such fear will be in anyway comforted by giving them the images they are desperate never to be seen.

They too appear to forget there’s nothing to stop spurned partners uploading other naked images of their ex, as pics must be identified individually.

Failing that those seeking revenge could simply upload the same image to other sites. The pictures could even be leaked or kept by disgruntled Facebook employees.

The social media giant presumes the victim has the offending photos in the first place.

The company brazenly ignores the potential victim is going through a living hell, having a digital knife, as it were, hanging over them.

A knife that, with a few simple strokes on a phone, would see their world H implode. anding over the very thing that is the reason for their sleepless nights to an anonymous, unaccountable, Facebook employee is not going to help anyone’s cause.

Victims may as well cc in Twitter and Instagram as well as the Vatican just in case there might be anyone left who didn’t have access to something they find deeply embarrassing.

And just who is it who actually decides what is and isn’t an inappropriate picture to be blurred?

The team tasked with looking into Russia’s attempt to destroy democracy or the one determining what level of unbelievable human suffering we can see?

It may be it is the luck of the draw for victims depending on whether they get a sympathetic or a heartless tech geek deciding.

Revenge porn is a serious problem and one, with all jokes aside, Facebook should be commended for trying to address.

Statistics in the US show 4% of internet users have fallen victim to it, and 10% of women under 30 have had someone threaten to post explicit photos of them online. Such figures will rise unless more is done to deter vengeful partners from posting images they were once entrusted to have.

The bottom line is victims will only be empowered by laws that prosecute offenders properly through the courts as opposed to them having to make their own humiliating case as to why they shouldn’t be humiliated.

Until that happens, victims have no control as to what is published.

The Facebook programme acts only to violate their privacy further in the pretence of trying to protect it.

Victims may as well cc in Twitter, Insta and the Vatican