Australia will participate in a limited global eSafety pilot with Facebook that seeks to prevent intimate images of users being posted and shared online.

According to the Commonwealth Government, the pilot will provide a portal for people concerned that an intimate image may be distributed online, and enable them to report to the Office of the eSafety Commissioner, the Australian Government agency taking part in the pilot.

Once notified, the eSafety Commissioner would inform Facebook to prevent the image being uploaded and shared across Facebook, Messenger, Facebook Groups and Instagram.

The Office of eSafety Commissioner was borne from a Global Working Group that was established by Facebook to facilitate government involvement in enhancing online safety.

“We’ve been participating in the Global Working Group to identify new solutions to keep people safe, and we’re proud to partner with Facebook on this important initiative as it aims to empower Australians to stop image-based abuse in its tracks,” the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant said.

“This pilot has the potential to disable the control and power perpetrators hold over victims, particularly in cases of ex-partner retribution and sextortion, and the subsequent harm that could come to them,” Ms Inman Grant said.

According to Facebook’s Head of Global Safety Antigone Davis, the pilot builds on the non-consensual intimate images tool announced by Facebook earlier this year.

“As part of our continued efforts to better detect and remove content that violates our community standards, we’re using image matching technology to prevent non-consensual intimate images from being shared on Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Groups and Messenger,” Ms Davis said. 

Other participants in the pilot with Facebook include the US, UK and Canada.