OP said "API", and refers to many thousands of images which need to be evaluated. It seems like he is pointing out here that this problem is unlikely to have a completely algorithmic solution, and if it does, the solution is probably not to spam the police with tens of thousands of criminal accusations against his customers that have never been vetted by a human.

Whether or not this is moral is irrelevant if it's not scalable. How about automated flagging of images for moderator review, and thinking about ways to reward or remunerate the moderators?

CV age detection should really be a thing, if it isn't already. Maybe there's an opportunity there if it's not already done, or way too hard?

> CV age detection should really be a thing, if it isn't already. Maybe there's an opportunity there if it's not already done, or way too hard?

I think this falls into the category of impossible. It is a hard enough problem for the human eye/brain. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traci_Lords

Because making pictures -- however contrary to present sensibilities -- illegal is a bit too close to thoughtcrime?

Producers and consumers of CP are not prosecuted for their thoughts, they are prosecuted for their actions. The subjects of these images suffer real and lasting psychological and physical damage.

Once again, these images don't contain meta-data stating the persons age, ages of consent are different around the world, someone can accidentally click something they didn't mean to or reasonably expected was not CP as almost the entire internet avidly sanitizes these images. I wouldn't go as far as to say it is "thought crime", but it can be non-obvious what is illegal. I am assuming the GP meant this and not that since these images already exist it is acceptable as the fantasy is in one's head, as that is not a reasonable excuse.

That argument doesn't apply here though. If someone is manually uploading an image of a child being raped to an image hosting website, there's no accident about it. Reporting someone who uploaded that image (i.e. someone who is distributing child pornography) is the only ethical and sensible option.

Now, if someone is uploading an image of their 16-year-old girlfriend taking a nude picture of themselves, that's still illegal but more of an ethical gray area, in which case I could understand hesitation at reporting to authorities. But based on OP's description, it's the real bad stuff, so reporting seems to be a no-brainer.

I am not crusading to uphold CP on the internet. It is interesting that you probably think my above comment was distasteful. But then you say:

> if someone is uploading an image of their 16-year-old girlfriend

That isn't a grey area, that is wrong unless you have consent[0]. My point is that it is hard to tell what is and isn't child porn(hence this thread in general) and that an 18 y/o could look younger. What I think is possible is that someone could upload photos of THEMSELVES when they are either in the US or even in a country where that is legal and it is non-obvious what the age is.

Child Porn is fucking disgusting, I am not here to defend it. I am just pointing out how hard it is to identify it and that some people upload their own photos online. If you had a database that magically let you know if an image was illegal then of course I would say take it down.

edit: [0]I meant this generally, not that it would be OK to do this if she was 16, but if your gf was of legal age and you posted pictures of her or the two of you together.

Let's say the person did have consent. It's still illegal, but is it still wrong?

Let's say they didn't have consent. It's wrong in the sense of it being "revenge porn", but should it really be considered as child pornography in the way it's classically viewed?

It's a gray area in that regard.

If someone is uploading things to his website which he can clearly identify as child porn without further analysis (if the child depicted is under 13, it's probably pretty easy to tell, unfortunately), I don't think he should hesitate to report it to law enforcement.

And if law enforcement investigates and learns it's not actually child porn... then they almost definitely won't charge anyone so long as no other crimes were committed. There are no downsides to reporting it and many downsides to keeping it to yourself.

That doesn't make a lot of sense if the photos are records of real crimes.

Photos of most kinds of disgusting crime are legal.

And I would imagine a bunch of child porn photos don't technically show anything illegal (nothing illegal about a child being naked on their own, what's illegal is the taking of the photos for sexual gratification - don't ask me exactly where the line is there, though)