New updates from Facebook, Instagram to stop intimate image spread

In a recent update, Instagram and Facebook now have some new features that make it difficult for suspicious adults to interact with teens on Instagram.

This all forms part of Instagram and Facebook’s Take It Down campaign which is a platform designed to prevent young people’s intimate images from spreading online.

Meta has expanded the Take It Down campaign with more languages allowing teens around the world to have more control over their content.

Teens around the world will now be able to use the Take It Down campaign to retain control over their intimate images.

The platform is supported by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children who assisted in developing the Take It Down platform which arrives behind the success of the StopNCII platform that aids adults in stopping the spread of their intimate images online.

Having a personal intimate image shared with others can be scary and overwhelming, especially for young people. It can feel even worse when someone tries to use those images as a threat for additional images, sexual contact or money — a crime known as sextortion.

Take It Down lets young people take back control of their intimate images. People can go to TakeItDown.NCMEC.org and follow the instructions to submit a case that will proactively search for their intimate images on participating apps. Take It Down assigns a unique hash value — a numerical code — to their image or video privately and directly from their own device. Once they submit the hash to NCMEC, companies like ours can use those hashes to find any copies of the image, take them down and prevent the content from being posted on our apps in the future.

The launch of Take It Down allows people of all ages to stop the spread of their intimate images.

This includes images of:

• Young people under 18 years old worried their content has been or will be posted online
• Parents or trusted adults on behalf of a young person
• Adults who are worried about images taken of them when they were under 18.

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