Peter Schorsch
Social media giant Meta recently announced the launch of a global platform run by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to combat the spread of intimate images of minors online.
Designed with Meta’s financial support, “Take It Down” is owned and operated by NCMEC and was built with minors’ privacy and data security in mind.
The platform will enable people to generate a hash — a kind of digital footprint — of an intimate image or video they’re concerned about privately and directly from their own devices, without having to upload their images or videos to the platform. They can then create a case and submit those hashes securely to Take It Down.
Using industry-leading technology, Meta will then scan the hash and remove any images or videos from its platforms that are a match.
In addition to minors and their parents or guardians, Take It Down is also helpful to adults who are concerned about explicit images taken of them when they were a minor.
Meta announced the launch of Take It Down as a continuation of the company’s commitment to helping people feel safe using their platforms and empowering people with resources to help resolve challenging situations.
Take It Down builds off of the success of platforms like StopNCII, a platform launched in 2021 with South West Grid for Learning (SWGfL) and more than 70 NGOs worldwide, which helps adults stop the spread of their intimate images online, a practice commonly referred to as “revenge porn.”
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is the nation’s largest and most influential child protection organization. In addition to Take It Down, NCMEC operates the CyberTipline — an online reporting system for all types of online child sexual abuse.
NCMEC says it responds to millions of reports of online child sexual abuse every year. In addition, they offer numerous resources and assistance to victims and survivors of child sexual abuse.
