Facebook against child pornography.

247 – This week, Facebook took an important step against child pornography. The PhotoDNA tool, developed by Microsoft Research and donated to the U.S. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, will be used by the social network to more accurately search for images published on the site. The goal is to identify illegal photos and remove inappropriate content.

Currently, illegal photos of children under 12 are deleted by company teams, who receive reports from users themselves. The system works by cross-referencing similar characteristics in different images, with 99,7% accuracy, and only gives a false alarm once every two billion searches.

“We expect and believe that Facebook is just the first of many,” Ernie Allen, the organization’s CEO, told The New York Times, referring to companies that might use the software. “Online services are going to become a hostile place for child pornography and pedophiles,” he added.

According to the NYT, PhotoDNA technology was developed by Hany Farid, a digital imaging specialist at Microsoft, to help institutions obtain hidden copies of images of child sexual exploitation on the internet, which are then forwarded to the police in an effort to identify the perpetrators and victims of the abuse.