Blocking naked photos in teenagers’ private communications using a meta tool

Meta aims to block youngsters from sending and receiving sexual photographs in encrypted chats later this year.

It may be voluntary for Facebook and Instagram adults to utilize the feature.

After the government and police condemned Meta for defaulting to encrypt Messenger chats.

They say encryption will hinder the firm’s child abuse detection.

Meta says the new capability is meant to protect users—under 13s can’t use its platforms—especially women and adolescents from getting or being pushed into sending nude photographs.

It also disclosed that Instagram and Messenger will block stranger messages for youngsters by default.

Police said earlier this month that kids exchanging images of themselves in underwear contributed to an upsurge in child sexual offenses in England and Wales.

Recently released court filings in a US lawsuit against Meta allege the company has information that 100,000 underage Facebook and Instagram users are sexually harassed daily. Meta argues the lawsuit misrepresented its work.

On Thursday, the internet giant introduced a mechanism to protect kids from obscene pictures in emails.

This system’s encrypted chat feature will be revealed later this year.

Government, law enforcement, and important children’s organizations have harshly opposed Meta’s recent move to default Facebook Messenger talks to end-to-end encryption (e2ee).

Critics say Meta cannot identify and report child abuse since E2ee only lets senders and receivers observe messages.

Apple’s iMessage, Signal, and Meta-owned WhatsApp, among others, use and defend this technology.

However, opponents argue that platforms should utilize client-side scanning to detect child abuse in encrypted apps.

Client-side scanning checks communications for matches with publicly accessible child abuse photos before encryption and transmission. Any illegal messages are reported to the company.

Meta’s innovative solution “shows that compromises that balance the safety and privacy rights of users in end-to-end encrypted environments are possible,” says the NSPCC.

Meta asserts that their new feature does not entail client-side scanning, which violates encryption’s core privacy-preserving purpose of keeping communications between sender and receiver.

It will only identify nudity using machine learning and run on smartphones, according to the BBC. Meta believes that machine learning to detect child abuse is challenging and that if done across its billions of users, there would be a high risk of error and innocent people being reported with catastrophic consequences.

Meta believes several approaches are used to protect children without compromising privacy. Methods include:

Systems that detect suspicious people and prohibit them from interacting with children or finding other suspicious adults.
prohibiting adults from messaging unfollowed kids to prevent them from connecting with children.

New Tool

Meta unveiled more than thirty child safety tools and resources on Thursday, along with several new child safety features.

Kids will automatically be blocked from receiving Instagram or Facebook Messenger messages from non-followers or connected accounts, according to the release.

Teens who break meta policies cannot be texted by adults.

Meta blogged that teens may only join group discussions or receive messages from individuals they follow or are linked to under this new default option.

Parents may now utilize parental monitoring tools to deny kids requests to change their fundamental safety settings, such as who can directly contact them or view critical information. They just heard about prior changes.