In its story about the U.K.'s plan to block online porn, the Guardian, almost as an aside, claimed Twitter is building a tool to help detect and stop child porn from appearing in tweets.
The company is said to be using Microsoft's PhotoDNA software. That tool matches photos to a list of known offending images and can often tell when a photo in the existing database has been altered.
Microsoft donated the software to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in 2009. Facebook started using PhotoDNA in 2011 and last year Microsoft offered the software to law officials at no cost to help track down pedophiles and stop the spread of child pornography.
Twitter's decision to implement the software is seemingly independent of the U.K. government's move to force people to opt-in to view porn online.
PhotoDNA is but one tool to keep child porn off the Internet. Many services rely on users to flag content that is offensive or illegal, but that doesn't work all the time, as Facebook found when it came under fire for failing to remove a video allegedly depicting sexual abuse of a young girl in good time.
H/T The Verge | Photo via mr_t_in_dc/Flickr
