We're guessing everyone reading this has at some point ... benefited from the Internet's massive and well-documented porn collection, which dwarfs the closet of that creepy kid we knew in high school. (But thank you for the Penthouses, creepy kid!) Everyone loves Internet porn. Except, of course, if that porn is of you and was put there without your consent -- like by an ex or a hacker. The fact that there are "revenge porn" websites specifically devoted to posting people's nudes against their will is terrifying, and if you find yourself as one of their victims, what can you do to stop it?
Even though there are now laws to stop revenge porn and some websites have posted a zero-tolerance policy, the answer is still "not much." And that's because ...
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There's No Technology For Preventing Revenge Porn From Being Uploaded
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Let's say every porn site in the world has a Grinch heart-boner moment and decides, "Fuck it, we're not letting people upload revenge porn ever again." How would they even be able to tell? The sad truth is that until we live in a Minority Report society where we can catch criminals before they are able to upload other people's nudes, there is no way to stop it from happening. The chances of a technology being created that could filter out revenge porn from friendly, run-of-the-mill pictures of genitals and boobies aren't very good, unless bald kids with psychic powers are born within the next decade.
Kenny McLeish/iStock/Getty ImagesAnd they're absolute perverts.
And, no, "Just don't take nude pictures of yourself!" isn't a solution, wise guy. The fact that people share intimate photos with loved ones isn't the problem here -- if you'd deny a Marine stationed overseas the chance to wank to his or her boo, you objectively hate freedom. The real problem is that even when it comes to the grossest of the gross the Internet has to offer, there's just no way to stop it from being uploaded. In fact, about 50,000 child porn pictures are shared every single fucking day because we sadly only have a very limited way of tracking it and taking it down. Illegal images can only be detected after they're already online and only if law enforcement already has an image to match it with; otherwise they wouldn't know what to search for.
The only hope we have of preventing revenge porn from being uploaded is to make the punishment so severe it hinders people from being tempted to do it in the first place. Of course, that still wouldn't stop people from seeking it out, because ...
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America Has A Cultural Fascination With Voyeurism
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