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Hey, please don't use phrasing like '... infected with ... autism'. First of all, autism isn't an infection, and second it dehumanises people with autism when you associate them with negative connotations like not being aware of human feelings and 'infecting' others. They are people too, don't dump on them.

>First of all, autism isn't an infection

it's being used as a rhetorical device. the implication here is that although autism isn't actually being spread per se, the environment at facebook (caused by profit motive or otherwise) causes "tone death and oblivious to basic human behavior and feelings".

>second it dehumanises people with autism when you associate them with negative connotations like not being aware of human feelings

im aware that autism exists on a spectrum, and there are high functioning autists, but isn't that at generally true?

> it's being used as a rhetorical device

And it's an ugly, demeaning rhetorical device which insults a large group of people, some of whom are users of this site. (Not that it'd be any more acceptable if they weren't present.) Find another way of expressing yourself.

That it's being used as a rhetorical device is immaterial. It's still dehumanizing. And no, people on the autistic spectrum are fully aware of human feelings. But people on the autistic spectrum typically have difficulty reading other people's emotions.

For some people on the spectrum, yes, but you have to realise it's a severely frustrating experience for them as well because they have feelings and want to make human connections too. So it's not helpful to paint them as being oblivious. As I said, it's dehumanising. They deserve dignity and that includes being aware of the language we use about them.

It's being used as a rhetorical device.

That's actually worse. It's like when "that's gay" used to be used as an insult.

To quote one much more eloquent than me:

Gay is synonymous with the lesser

Pretend he wrote instead: "... infected with ... <your_country>ism ..."

A) I think we're talking about modification-resistant fingerprinting methods, not just a simple hash of the data.

B) That's a support nightmare; it would be nearly trivial to start submitting false reports from a ton of accounts without establishing a pattern so those accounts could easily be ignored. Regardless, how do you prove that you "own an image" (what does that even mean?) and that it was reported as an "intimate photo" maliciously?

I agree that FB's current solution is really bad, and if it were me, I certainly wouldn't pro-actively send in photos of myself, but I'm at a loss for how they can address A & B.

> That's a support nightmare; it would be nearly trivial to start submitting false reports from a ton of accounts without establishing a pattern so those accounts could easily be ignored.

What's stopping me from flooding false reports now? Arguably, only reviewing the image they already have once a hash matches is less work, since they wouldn't have to review all incoming reports, only matched ones.

> Arguably, only reviewing the image they already have once a hash matches is less work, since they wouldn't have to review all incoming reports, only matched ones.

They would still need to investigate reports that didn’t match known hashes, but you’re right that this would be beneficial. Images that match a known hash could be prioritized during review.

Don't they have to do that now anyway?

The solution is to hash it locally and send the hash to Facebook without saving a local copy. Simple as that. Sure, someone could still do a lot of work to intercept or reverse engineer it and make an app to circumvent the hashing. But even if such an app existed, it would be obscure and people trying to upload unauthorized pics wouldn't bother or even know it exists.

If you've got pics you don't want on the internet, the first rule is to not upload them to anywhere on the internet. Actually the real first rule is not to take them. Flash people your bits in person instead.

Actually the real first rule is not to take them. Flash people your bits in person instead.

Assuming you were the one to take the pictures, of course, and not got them from your ex-partner that's trying to pressure you by threatening to publish them on FB.

It's definitely a hard problem, especially if you think about it a little rather than just dismissing it out of hand. For one thing, the hashes being discussed are resilient to some modifications - they're not general purpose hashes.

More importantly, this is a case in which FB is making a serious attempt to deal with a complex issue rather than simply throwing up their hands and trotting out one of their standard excuses - 'it's not our fault, there isn't anything we can do, it's a side effect of the algorithm, we aren't responsible for how people use the platform' etc. This is a welcome change.

> It's only going to catch those dumb enough not to modify the images

You seem to be assuming they're using a general purpose hash, rather than one suitable for this purpose. That seems unlikely.