MANILA - Facebook's parent company Meta on Wednesday said it has been enhancing its initiatives to protect women on its platforms, including its tool to prevent the posting of nonconsensual intimate images on social media.

Meta has been working with StopNCII.Org operated by the UK Revenge Porn Helpline to prevent sensitive images to be posted on its platforms Facebook and Instagram, Meta's Global Head of Women's Safety Cindy Southworth told reporters in a virtual briefing.

"When someone’s intimate images were shared without her permission, it can be devastating. It has long been our policy to remove non-consensual intimate images, sometimes referred to, erroneously, as revenge porn," Southworth said.

What StopNCII.org does is create a hash or digital fingerprint of images that women don't want to be posted and blocks the said images when it is detected.

"This platform is the first initiative of its kind to safely and securely to help people who are worried that their intimate images may be shared without their consent," she added.

Southworth said the pilot was also designed to be "proactive" so that victims would not wait for the images to be posted before they could report them.

Anyone can create a case and a hash, made up of alphanumerical code and a string of letters and numbers, of images they don't want to be posted using the platform.

"When someone is concerned that their intimate images may be posted online to platforms like Facebook and Instagram, they can create a case with Stopncii.org to rapidly detect it and prevent images from being posted," Southworth said.

These include people who have images previously shared in a consensual relationship, but now that their relationship is over, they're worried that those images would get published, she said.

"The real success is in the fact that proactive option exists, anybody can report to Stopncii.org right now," she said.

Meta said this is just among the many initiatives they have taken to ensure women's safety on the platform.

Meta has also launched other initiatives such as its Safety Center, protection for public figures, and its measure to combat coordinated mass harassment on its platforms.

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