
Ask HN: Porn Filter API! (Photo Moderation) - hyung
Would you be interested in an API/web service that tells you which of your submitted photos are safe for a general audience?<p>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).<p>I have a system that already works well for several major sites, and was wondering if there is a larger market out there.<p>* Photos are reviewed manually, and we have two levels of review.<p>* The response time is not instantaneous, but under 10-30 seconds.<p>* Error rates are generally very low (&#60;0.01%).<p>Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
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jayfuerstenberg
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.

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hyung
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.

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geuis
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.

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tluyben2
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...

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hyung
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.

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

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hyung
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.

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

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hyung
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?

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

