Chatroulette Working On Genital Recognition Algorithm 364
Show them while you can, Internet exhibitionists. Chatroulette is working on image-recognition software that will filter out shots of male genitalia. The website's founder, Andrey Ternovskiy, hopes that blocking the offending members will help clean up Chatroulette's reputation. He's even enlisted the help of Napster founder Shawn Fanning. I wonder if someone has told Andrey how well it went for Napster?
a democratic solution (Score:1, Interesting)
odds are the penis bandits are frequent offenders. let the community flag them for you. once an IP has been flagged enough times, ban them.
crowd source it, let the people decide.
gotta be easier than penis recognition software.
But... but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Though really this is an opportunity waiting to be snatched up. Chatroulette has demonstrated that there is a huge userbase just waiting to wave their willies on camera, so all somebody need do is create software that does something similar, and then make it known that 'this is the new place to flash people on teh intarwebs!' and BOOM instant userbase (= MONAY).
If I weren't so lazy I'd do it myself.
Hope this works (Score:3, Interesting)
When I first heard about Chatroulette, I thought "what a cool idea?" Then, when I heard about how many sickos are wanking and flashing wiener, that killed it for me. I don't think this algorithm will work, but if they can figure something out before they get branded as that "cock flashing website" they'll probably bring in more prudish people like me.
Re:Really... (Score:1, Interesting)
That could work but only if done like Slashdot were moderators have to prove themselves or they don't get to moderate. Otherwise the people themselves become the trolls (see: Digg)
Re:Suddenly... (Score:3, Interesting)
But I thought people that go to chatroulette should be expecting crap like this and worse? I haven't bothered since I don't have a webcam, nor do I want to risk seeing some yucky stuff.
FWIW, I doubt seeing some genitals would bother me. As long as they're not mangled/bloody or gross in some other way. Maybe they should have something that recognizes Goatse and worse stuff, that'll be more useful (though a lot more challenging
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons... (Score:1, Interesting)
...But jerking off on Chatroulette is actually really fun. It might take a hundred "nexts" to find the one room full of sexy college girls who want to see you jerk off ... but when you do, it's really hot. I can only imagine how satisfying it would be to be a gay guy and to be able to find an anonymous wanking parter in about 3 or 4 clicks.
Re:So... the only problem is the penis? (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't have any perfect solutions, but I'd say a radically different way of solving the problem would be to make people pay for it, even a small amount.
If you catch misbehavior, you boot them without refund. And refuse to accept that credit card account as payment again. It doesn't eliminate the trolls, but it makes it harder. (It also helps pay for the fact that you need staff to review troll reports, and since that job involves looking at trolls all day...)
There's also a Slashdot-esque solution, separating the anons from the newbies from the people who have earned reputations. Let people set the level at which they choose to browse.
Added to all this an automatic "I can tell you're trolling" detector might save some grief (people might get trolled and not report it, letting the troll go on), but they're going to need more than that.
Re:So... the only problem is the penis? (Score:5, Interesting)
What they need is a rating system, like /. The trolls still troll, but the amount of people exposed to the troll is greatly reduced and it ruins most of their fun. Sure they can continue to use it, but you could redirect them to other random trolls. That way all the trolls get to look at each others cocks, and people who aren't that interested in cock will get to the people they want to interact with faster.
Re:Posting anonymously for obvious reasons... (Score:1, Interesting)
this is an extremely difficult problem (Score:3, Interesting)
What about blur time? (Score:2, Interesting)
How about letting people view whatever they want, but if most other people don't want to see it, someone needs to wait a bit longer to see it. My idea is the following:
* Each user has an associated 'blur time', which is the amount of time before the picture will be completely visible with no distortion
* When a user is encountered, the distortion starts at something large, and ramps down until zero at the blur time
* The blur time is a function of the time taken for people to change to another user -- if they change before blur time is over (or shortly after blur time is over), then the blur time is increased, otherwise blur time is reduced
* Blur time is capped at a particular time, say 10s
So if people really want to see everything, they just need to wait 10s after each change.
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)