Although users suffering from harassment or bullying on social networks have the possibility to block harmful accounts, even with Instagram launching a tool to silence other users, the truth is that this evil is still far from being eradicated.
However, a group of researchers at the University of Colorado have developed a technique that will allow parents to be notified if their child is bullied on social networks, thanks to a free app for Android developed by the institution’s Cyber Security Research Center.
Specifically, it is a new scanning system that allows detecting massive amounts of data on social networks in real time with the aim of eliminating unpleasant messages and comments quickly and send notifications to the account administrators or their parents, if they are children.
This system offers the possibility of identifying when bullying starts and letting parents know about the problem in time. The technique was published in a document revealing that the team of researchers developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) capable of monitoring Instagram in real time through a system that signals offensive publications.
The researchers conducted the tests with real data from Vine, the late video sharing platform, and Instagram, allowing access to public research data. In this regard, the team said that the accuracy of its tool reached 70 percent, sending a warning within two hours of the start of offensive comments, something that no other software currently does.
The Android app is called BullyAlert and is now available for download from Google’s Play Store. At the moment the app only works with the Instagram social network, but the researchers’ plans include expanding it to other social networking platforms.