I have used Chatroulette exactly once, out of morbid curiosity. After being “nexted” 4-5 times by bored-looking dudes who were disappointed (either because I don’t have breasts or because I wasn’t showing what I do have—I don’t know & I don’t judge), I decided it wasn’t really my scene. It has led to a few funny moments, I’ve heard, but I got to wondering whatever happened to those plans I read about a while back for software to block the unwelcomely-pervy side of Chatroulette—yes, in my family, holiday banter includes discussion of penis-recognition software (or PRS, as I’ll call it.)
My brother-in-law and I had an interesting unusual discussion about the process of creating a PRS algorithm. Not so much about the coding itself as the awkward discussions that might begin with “Why do you have so many pictures of penises open on the desktop of your work computer?” But did those rumors ever lead to anything?
Most articles on PRS appear to be from 2010. Around the same time, the company was discussing methods of logging the IP addresses of people doing inappropriate things on the service, and even taking screenshots (the “don’t put it on the internet unless…” rule even applies to dudebros enamored with their own junk.)
Through a minimal amount of research I discovered that the discussion of PRS originated from a June 13, 2010 Techcrunch article that mentioned it as an offhand possibility:
Can Chatroulette become something more? Look for feature changes soon that will try to send all those penises to the background. The service may add software that can quickly scan video to determine if a penis is being shown. And users that are consistently quickly skipped over (presumably because they are exposing themselves or otherwise being disgusting) can be flagged as well. With those and other changes Chatroulette may be able to put people who actually want to talk to each other in touch much more often.
The reality is less dramatic than actual PRS, but probably more useful. The site now requires everyone to register, and you can be blocked if too many users flag you for impropriety. The filter, meanwhile, apparently uses existing tech to identify nudity through what I will call “not-facial-recognition software”:
The filter identifies excessive amounts of exposed skin while simultaneously recognizing faces as appropriate skin.
So now you know. Even though you didn’t ask.
SIDE NOTE REGARDING DISPLAY OF MALE GENITALIA: Here is a five-step test for determining whether someone wants to see your penis. (1) An adult (2) who is not intoxicated (3) in a private location (4) says “Show me your penis,” and (5) is specifically and unambiguously addressing you.
Photo credit: By Wiki nol ege [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.
I wondered what happened to those rumors too. I guess it’s harder to develop PRS than Facial Recognition because, unlike a face, there’s so many things that software could confuse with a penis, or even breasts etc. for that matter, especially when people start only revealing PART of it.
“Identifying excessive amounts of exposed skin” never works that well because of the enormous false alarm rate. You can easily be completely exposing your arms, legs, chest and stomache while not revealing anything inappropriate, but will probably trigger a false alarm by the software, while you can also be fully clothed EXCEPT for the inappropriate areas, which is probably a commonly used method to bypass this software.