Machine Learning and Content Filtering

Julie Nashawaty
2 min readNov 15, 2015

Now that I have your attention, let’s talk about Machine Learning in the “Adult Content” space.

Our friends over at isitporn.com (they took a quick break for now — but they’ll be back!) implemented indico’s content filtering algorithm to determine porn vs. not porn. Why is this useful? Well, for one, I don’t need to jump on a normal website in front of my boss only to have ahem, giant boobs pop up. #Yikes #SorrySlater

Remember that day US Airways Tweeted An Extreme Pornographic Image And Left It Up For A Long Time? (a.k.a. remember the day that Sally in Marketing got fired?)

Think about the backlash that one. Bad publicity, scorned eyeballs, lost revenue… pure humiliation. Now say that inside of your major business brand, you use indico to alert you of how “porn-ey” the picture you’re about to post is. Instead of pushing something you think is a normal branding image, it says “hold up, you really want to push something that is 100% porn?”

Content filtering has a lot of uses. Do you want your brand to accidentally advertise on youporn? On the flip side, do you porn players want to make more money by advertising the right images? And I say that because well, branding is branding.

Let’s take a look at all of the images on the internet involving your brand. Let’s do a data dump and let the computer decide how PG you’re being.

The sheer magnitude of pictures posted every day is astonishing. As of the last statistical study in May 2014, we were uploading and sharing over 1.8 billion photos each day. That’s billion with a “B” A DAY. As we head into 2016, I can’t wait for the 2015 report to come out. I have a feeling 70% of the images on the internet are NSFW.

Let’s clean up some of the filth. Let’s make sure that my neices and nephews never accidently see something they’re not ready to see. Let’s get ML to protect your brand, protect your kids, and keep the happy world of puppies and rainbows that we live in. That last part was purely sarcastic. But hell, one step at a time, right?

Email me at julie@indico.io. Especially you, US Airways… especially you.

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Julie Nashawaty

Aste (Date Safer!) Founder (http://aste.io) | | Entrepreneur | Investigator | Speaker | Writer | Making Online Dating Safe One Date At A Time