The biggest social media sites have been using Microsoft technology to combat child pornography. Now, Microsoft is giving that tool away-- for free.
Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30) on
Wednesday launched a cloud version of PhotoDNA, software that prevents
child porn from being uploaded to websites. It's currently used by more
than 70 companies, including Facebook (FB, Tech30) and Twitter (TWTR, Tech30).
Now, online service providers and businesses hosting user-generated content can apply to use the service too.
With an exponential increase in social media sharing, weeding out child
pornography from billions of uploads is challenging. About 720,000 of
the 1.8 billion pictures uploaded across the Internet each day are
illegal child sexual abuse photos, Microsoft wrote in a blog post.
"The tool has amazing accuracy, and it has enabled us to find
problematic content faster than ever before," Facebook said in a blog
post from 2011, when the company started using PhotoDNA. "And, because
PhotoDNA has been so effective for us, we encourage other sites that
allow photo uploads to use it as well."
But only social media mammoths could set up huge servers, hire technical assistance and dish out the big bucks for it.
Now, four years after Facebook started using it, even the smallest
organizations can benefit from this filtering service -- with no servers
to be set up, no expert guidance and not a single cent to be spent.
Companies like Flipboard. a popular social magazine where users share
and curate content from the Web and social media, are eager to use the
technology to protect users and young victims while helping make the
Internet safer for everyone.
Flipboard has been using the service for a few months now.
"We did manual investigation before but that sort of solution doesn't
scale," David Creemer, Flipboard's head of Platform Engineering, told
CNNMoney.
The software will identify images that have been previously been flagged.
"Initially, I personally verified images that were flagged by PhotoDNA
and I never saw a false positive. If PhotoDNA says a photo is illegal, I
believe it," Creemer said.
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