Facebook testing a bizarre method to tackle revenge porn

The method requires you to send your own nudes to yourself via the social network’s Messenger application.

Facebook’s new anti-revenge method is a bit awkward, isn’t it? (REUTERS)

Facebook is working on a new method to tackle the growing menace of revenge porn. The method, however, requires you to send your own nudes to yourself via the social network's Messenger application.

This strategy would help Facebook to create a digital fingerprint for the picture and mark it as non-consensual explicit media.

So if a relationship goes sour, you could take proactive steps to prevent any intimate images in possession of your former love interest from being shared widely on Facebook or Instagram.

Facebook is partnering with a Australian government agency to prevent such image-based abuses, the Australia Broadcasting Corp reported.

If you're worried your intimate photos will end up on Instagram or Facebook, you can get in contact with Australi's e-Safety Commissioner. They might then tell you to send the images to yourself on Messenger.

"It would be like sending yourself your image in email, but obviously this is a much safer, secure end-to-end way of sending the image without sending it through the ether," e-Safety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant told ABC.

Once the image is sent via Messenger, Facebook would use technology to "hash" it, which means creating a digital fingerprint or link.

"They're not storing the image, they're storing the link and using artificial intelligence and other photo-matching technologies," Grant said.

"So if somebody tried to upload that same image, which would have the same digital footprint or hash value, it will be prevented from being uploaded," she explained.

Australia is one of four countries taking part in the "industry-first" pilot which uses "cutting-edge technology" to prevent the re-sharing on images on its platforms, Facebook's Head of Global Safety Antigone Davis was quoted as saying.

"The safety and wellbeing of the Facebook community is our top priority," Davis said.