If you’re tired of receiving unsolicited dick pics in your Twitter DMs, you need to try “Safe DM” – an AI filter that will block out 99% of them.
According to research, a shocking percentage of millennial women (78% to be exact) have received an “uninvited graphic image” from men. This number marks “cyberflashing” as a major problem – both on social platforms and on messaging apps in particular.
Apart from the obvious – that sending unsolicited messages like this counts as sexual harassment – it’s actually illegal in many places. But that doesn’t seem to curb the problem. But modern problems require modern solutions, it seems.
A developer called Kelsey Bressler is working on such a solution. Bressler and two other developers build a filter for Twitter called “Safe DM” that uses the power of AI to “block up to 99% of dick pics” from your Twitter DMs.
Safe DM has been trained for the last few months with real pics, to identify and filter them out. To source them, Bressler went on Twitter last year to solicit dick picks (in the name of science of course), to make sure the filter was working perfectly. According to reports, she actually received over 4,000 pictures.
I'm soliciting dick pics at the handle @showyodiq .
This is not a joke.
I am testing a filter that is under development which will automatically detect dick pics in DMs and handle them on behalf of the user (delete, delete&block).
18+ , consensual, human dicks only please.
— K E L S E Y (@raeBress) September 5, 2019
The filter is out (since Valentine’s Day no less) and available for all. If you want to try it, head on over to this page and enter your email to register.
Then you will need to authorize the filter with your Twitter account, and you will be protected. At least theoretically, since we haven’t actually tested it. Yet.
Those who have, say that it actually does work, although it may also filter out other phallic-shaped objects.
While testing the AI, Bressler tweeted that “the filter let one (caged) penis through” while it “works great on free range penises.” So there could be images that are also let through. If you’re worried about your privacy, and Safe DM having access to your Twitter DMs, you can (probably) rest assured. While “the developers can’t read your DMs,” they can “see if a message contains a dick pic or not.”
The filter let one (caged) penis through . Works great on free range penises though!
Testing is off to a great start.
Keep them coming folks, you're making the world a better place.
— K E L S E Y (@raeBress) September 5, 2019
Convinced?
Even if you’re not, you can at least agree that Safe DM is a step in the right direction. However, it is troubling that users have to build tools like these to protect themselves. If this is a solution, social platforms aren’t doing enough to help.
Next steps? Well, Safe DM should be created for other platforms – not just Twitter. According to a recent report, Bressler is already discussing this with another social media company. Could it be coming to Facebook next?
Image credit: Neon MFG (Yes, you can buy that neon eggplant emoji. No, we are not affiliated with this site)
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