Facebook’s parent company, Meta, has unveiled a new tool to take down offensive and explicit pictures of youngsters online. To assist with the welfare of children who have experienced sexual exploitation and abuse, the technology called Take Down was created in partnership with the US group NCMEC (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children).
The tool is simple to use and accessible to everyone around the world. Nevertheless, at first, it can only take explicit and offensive photos from a small number of chosen websites. In order to broaden the tool’s application, the company plans to collaborate with other websites in the future.
The Take Down tool functions like any other website and necessitates collaboration with numerous websites in order to remove offensive images. Only a few websites, including Facebook, Instagram, PornHub, YouTube, and OnlyFans, have so far expressed a desire to employ the technology.
It is important to understand that the Take Down tool will only delete undesirable, explicit, and photographs of kids (under 18) that have been modified to display explicit behaviour. It won’t get rid of adult photographs with explicit content.
Anyone can use this tool to report offensive and explicit photographs of minors, and its use is not country-specific. However, in order for the technology to be useful, websites using it must collaborate with NCMEC.
Take Down tool is a positive step in the right direction for assisting kids who have experienced sexual abuse and exploitation. We applaud Metta’s initiative to provide a technology that would make it simpler for websites to remove pornographic photographs of minors, and we hope that other websites will join them in the fight against this horrific crime.
