Facebook Knows When Someone Posts Your Nudes — but Won't Tell You

The site claims to automatically — and quietly — delete revenge porn.

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If someone tries to upload revenge porn — naked pictures of a former partner shared online to "punish" or harass them — or any other nudes of someone else to Facebook, the site claims that its automated system will be able to detect and prevent it.

But the would-be victims of that revenge porn would never know it happened, reports The Daily Dot, as Facebook will not send out any notifications about the attempt. It's a surprising level of secrecy around a system meant to block criminal behavior on the platform, especially given that further harassment could happen elsewhere.

Sealed Vault

As Futurism reported last year, Facebook's plan involves creating "digital fingerprints" for lewd or compromising pictures that were pre-emptively shared with Facebook's security team.

If anyone else tried to post a picture matching that digital fingerprint, the upload would be blocked.

Closed Doors

The decision to keep would-be victims in the dark is confusing. Sending would-be victims a push notification about attempted harassment could be traumatizing, reports Gizmodo, but the blanket decision to not tell anyone could keep people from taking action to prevent further harassment. Gizmodo advocates for an option to opt-in to notifications about an attempted revenge porn upload.

While the "digital fingerprint" program still raises plenty of questions about privacy, it seems like a no-brainer to not insist on keeping people in the dark about attempts to harass them online.

READ MORE: Facebook Screws Up a Critical Piece of Its Anti-Revenge Porn Tech [Gizmodo]

More on privacy: Facebook Wants To Protect Your Nudes By Storing them as a “Digital Fingerprint”