Facebook announces new tools to help people who are victims of revenge porn, the dissemination of personal compromising photos for the purpose of revenge
It happens that two people break up and the reactions on both sides trigger mixed feelings. Despair, depression, jealousy, anger, until you get to extreme cases such as revenge, the desire to make the former partner pay bitterly by publishing on social networks of its red light photos.
It is what is called in the jargon “revenge porn”, ie the sharing of intimate personal images of the former partner or companion. 93% of people who are victims of this kind of revenge suffer considerable emotional repercussions – according to a study by the US Victims of Non-Consensual Intimate Images – which cause in 82% of cases serious damage in their social sphere, at work or in other important areas of life. Facebook, aware of the problem, has introduced new tools to counteract this phenomenon. When this type of content is reported, it is possible to prevent it from being shared on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram.
Despicable revenge
Facebook has worked with the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, and other associations, to develop tools to report this type of content and make appropriate support available to victims. Here’s what to do if “revenge porn” occurs. Anyone who sees a personal image on Facebook that has been shared without their explicit permission can report it using the “Report” link that appears when you click on the down arrow or “…” dots next to the post. Qualified individuals from Facebook’s Community Operations team will evaluate the image and remove it if it violates Community standards. In many cases, this report will also lead to the deactivation of the account that shared the image or images without the explicit permission of the person portrayed. At this point, “photo-matching” technologies come into play to prevent further attempts to share the image on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram. Anyone attempting to share it after it has been flagged and removed will be warned that they are violating Facebook policies. Victims of revenge porn will receive support from trained staff.
V revenge porn is not sextortion
While revenge porn is, in the vast majority, the result of an impulse of revenge for the end of a relationship, sextortion is outright extortion. The sextortion – as the name suggests – is a neologism that comes from the union of the words “sexual” and “extortion” and that is rapidly spreading through various social networks and online dating sites. It is a crime of extortion punished by article 629 of our penal code with a sentence ranging from five to twenty years of imprisonment. The script is, more or less, the same. A person, usually quite attractive, “hooks” his victim in various ways and once he has won his trust, proposes to undress in front of the webcam or exchange “red light” photos. The unfortunate man or woman, if this happens, is immediately blackmailed with the threat of spreading these shots if he or she does not pay a large sum of money. Do not fall for the deception!