Ask HN: Porn Filter API! (Photo Moderation)

7 points by hyung 14 years ago | 11 comments

Would you be interested in an API/web service that tells you which of your submitted photos are safe for a general audience?

It would be useful for social networks, dating sites, forums, or any site that allows users to post images. The service would also handle videos and text (such as spam).

I have a system that already works well for several major sites, and was wondering if there is a larger market out there.

* Photos are reviewed manually, and we have two levels of review.

* The response time is not instantaneous, but under 10-30 seconds.

* Error rates are generally very low (<0.01%).

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

jayfuerstenberg 14 years ago |

nude.js (http://www.patrick-wied.at/static/nudejs/) is a Javascript library that detects nudity in images.

I can't attest to its effectiveness but it maybe what you're looking for.

hyung 14 years ago | |

Thanks, this is the first I've heard of it.

Reading through the link, I believe it does a combination of skin tone detection and human body pattern matching. Typically, this solution can detect a fully nude human pretty well, but fails on something like a close-up/partial shot of a penis.

geuis 14 years ago |

I think this would very useful, but for the reverse reason. I believe there could be a lot of value in filtering out non nude photos. Realize the number of photo sharing sites that are available, being able to filter many of them and pull out nude photos could be very useful for those working on porn site companies.

tluyben2 14 years ago |

We would be interested. We run http://picturepush.com and adult material is forbidden, but there is a lot of it added anyway (of course). A service for fixing that would be great.

I would expect, by now, someone would have made something automated for that kind of thing though...

hyung 14 years ago | |

I've worked with a number of companies that have tried an automated solution (including teams with PhDs in Computer Vision), but it's just not there yet. I'm sure within the next 5 years someone will figure it out, though.

hyung 14 years ago | |

Can you PM me? My contact info is in my profile.

nreece 14 years ago |

Amazon Mechanical Turk and CrowdFlower (using MTurk) support that already.

hyung 14 years ago | |

Thanks. I'd argue that our team's error rates and response times are lower than CrowdFlower, and last I checked, our rates are better as well.

We have good technology and an experienced team, which lets us check a lot of photos faster and more reliably than the competition.

Do you happen to know anyone that uses CrowdFlower for this? I'd love to chat and see what they think of the service.

petervandijck 14 years ago |

I'm fairly sure there are a few existing services like this out there, have you looked at those?

hyung 14 years ago | |

I only know about CrowdFlower/Mechanical Turk at the moment.

I know of other teams that moderate photos, but I don't know anyone that's put together a publicly available API/web service for it.

Do you happen to know the names of any existing services?

petervandijck 14 years ago | | |

At a glance, I see 2 on this page http://www.google.com/search?q=moderate+photos+api