Imagine finding a video of yourself that you did not consent to. Tisiphone found an intimate video of her on one of the biggest porn websites.
The 25 year-old-victim, Tisiphone received a call from one of her male friends who dropped the heart-wrenching news to her.
Tisiphone requested her details be private. She has donned this alias that is one of the Furies of Greek mythology, the goddesses of vengeance.
“He told me that I was on Pornhub. Of course, my first reaction was that it must be a mistake. How could it be me?” she recounted.
The link her friend sent her was of an intimate video, filmed without her consent as a teenager while she lived in the United States.
“The incident happened maybe seven years ago. I was really young, a teenager … I had no idea that monster had secretly filmed me until I saw my video on Pornhub,”
“It was really devastating. I consider myself a very strong person and well educated, but that was the moment when I literally stopped and thought, ‘I can’t live any more. I don’t want to live anymore’.”
Tisiphone was on the brink of suicide, ascending the roof of her building and climbing over its fence.
Por eso se encuentra creando Alecto AI, una App de reconocimiento facial que permite que cualquier víctima de abuso o violencia sexual pueda identificar si en el basto mundo del internet existe algún video suyo de pornografía no consensuada. pic.twitter.com/ZapLawQyp8
— Alejandra López (@MaleHauntsWitch) July 29, 2021
“At that time, it was for me the only way to get out of it, because I was so ashamed, and I was so scared. I felt like I was betrayed by the whole world.”
She pulled back from jumping from the thought of the pain she would cause her family if she left.
“I survived, barely,” she said, gathering herself.
Tisiphone worked for a U.S tech company in its content policy team, and now she’s striking back.
“>She is currently developing an app also named after another of the Furies, goddess Tisiphone’s sister, Alecto AI. The app uses facial recognition, and will hopefully be launched before the end of 2021.
The app strives to help survivors easily find images and/or footage of themselves online.
A study conducted in three countries last year found that one in three people have experienced some variation of image-based sexual abuse, and unfortunately, cases are on the rise amid the coronavirus pandemic.
This is commonly known as ‘revenge porn’. A seemingly self-explanatory term that however doesn’t encapsulate the entire scope of the issue, according to experts.
Tisiphone contacted This Week in Asia:
“Damage control is particularly painful [for survivors]. The infringing content is sometimes hosted on various platforms … It is difficult to search for this content scattered all over the internet, while being forced to relive our trauma over and over again,”
“We can’t defend ourselves unless we have access to technology that can help us do so.”
This is why she has elected facial recognition software for her app, saying it’s the most efficient method in tackling image-based abuse.
Alecto AI scans users’ faces to then searching for their images online.
“We are disrupting not only content policy and revenge porn, but also disrupting facial recognition, making artificial intelligence more human-centred.”
However, she notes that the existing tools have lower accuracy rates when applied to women and people of colour.
In light of this, the app is specifically aimed at giving more power to individuals to ‘decentralise the process’.
Tisiphone noted that major platforms like Facebook often rely on users to report abusive content, which inevitably gets backlogged as the administration deals with a huge range of issues.
As part of an accelerator programme at an (unnamed) top American university, Tisiphone has compiled a team of five POC women to assist in the app’s development that will be ‘powerful, unbiased and compassionate’.
Tisiphone stated that her team are working on implementing numerous security measures which include biometric verification, ensuring users’ sensitive info is only accessed by themselves.
To ensure gridlock security, Alecto AI will also use end-to-end encryption with no data being saved on the server.
The app is being tested on the Apple app store. It will initially open to users who pay a monthly fee which is yet to be announced. For an app that is doing as much as it is, paying is unquestionable,
“Server costs are extremely expensive, especially when you are trying to scrape the internet for millions of images. I cannot stay in business if we don’t charge people. But it’s going to be an affordable price. Much cheaper than other solutions out there,” Tisiphone said.
She said she is still working on her own case with the authorities.
“You have no idea how hard it was for me to even file a police report,” she said.
“I am lucky because I speak English, but a lot of Chinese girls don’t speak English and when they go to the Chinese police they will tell them that this is not under their jurisdiction … Even within the US, different states have different laws, some states choose to criminalise revenge porn while others don’t.”
Her perpetrator fled to Mexico as her case was ‘closed’. She eventually found a lawyer to work her case pro-bono after multiple non-profit organisations didn’t respond to her pleas for help.
Despite the content being removed from major websites, it has still been appearing on other low-key websites which her lawyers are striving for removal.
