Programmer 'sorry' for tool to track women in porn sites
Technology | Written by : IANS| Updated: Sun, Jun 02, 2019, 04:16 PM
San Francisco, June 2 (IANS) An anonymous programmer who claimed to have created a face-recognition technology to track women appearing in porn videos realised the harm the tool could cause and deleted the project and all its data, said a media report.
In a post on popular Chinese social network Weibo, the Germany-based programmer claimed that he built a tool to cross-reference women's photos on social media, causing global outrage.
Though there is no proof that the user had actually built the software, he is now sorry to have caused trouble, according to a report in MIT Technology Review.
Using face-recognition technology, the programmer claimed to have "successfully identified more than 100,000 young ladies" in the adult industry "on a global scale", news website Vice reported.
According to the man, the algorithm that he created scanned popular porn sites and then matched the data compiled with images on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok among others.
The programmer said his reasoning for making this tool was "to have the right to know on both sides of the marriage", according to the Vice report.
After his post led to a public outcry, he claimed his intention was to allow women to check if they were on porn sites and then send a copyright take down request.
Many users on the social media pointed out that collecting such data was illegal and dangerous.