Please describe your proposed solution
About NFTCDN
NFTCDN is Cardano’s dedicated NFT Content Delivery Network, enabling products and services to display NFT media content easily, efficiently and at high-speed to their worldwide user base through our global CDN. Our capabilities include NFT Image Display delivery and Metadata Information provisioning, and we seek to introduce the NSFW capability as we see this as a highly beneficial, important and much-needed feature for the Cardano community’s growth and adoption, prioritising inclusivity for a diverse and wider range of audiences.
Problem Statement
Over 8.45 million NFTs have been minted on Cardano to date, and the vast majority of these are created by content creators in the form of images. A significant challenge that emerges for products and services that display NFTs is the presence of explicit content which may not be age appropriate to younger and sensitive audiences, presenting the following risks to them and to the Cardano ecosystem as whole:
• Consumer Protection and Legal Risk - Exposing users to adult content without their consent, especially when it comes to intentionally not moderating content provision to minors, poses significant ethical and legal risks, harming a product’s or service's reputation notwithstanding breaching laws built to protect minors, leading to serious legal consequences like lawsuits and fines.
Examples of such laws include, but are not limited to, the UK’s Digital Economy Act, Protection of Children Act, Online Safety Act and the EU’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive, and Safer Internet Programme. While state legislatures in the United States are numerous, unique and varied to each state, they do include provisions such as the Age-Appropriate Design Code Act (California) and Online Protection of Children Act (Utah). Additionally, federal legislation towards the Transportation of obscene matters for sale or distribution (18 U.S.C. § 1465), Engaging in the business of selling or transferring obscene matter (18 U.S.C. § 1466) and Possession with intent to sell, and sale, of obscene matter on Federal property (18 U.S.C. § 1460) in addition to the Transfer of obscene material to minors (18 U.S.C. § 1470) necessitate the creation of a NFT NSFW detection capability to identify and label content, reducing the legal risks for products and services.
• Operational Stability and Compliance - The risk is exacerbated by the need to comply with numerous third-party vendors’ acceptable use policies and/or terms of service - that prohibit the direct breaking of local laws of the end user and indirectly prohibit explicit content - upon which platforms are built upon, including Internet Service Providers in nations within the Middle East and Asia often take a blanket approach in blocking websites that host adult content. By deploying a NFT NSFW detection capability for products and services, we are able to enable them to ensure compliance to the terms of use of their third party service providers.
• Hinders brand partnerships and market perception - The presence of NSFW content can severely hinder partnerships with established brands and investors who would prioritise their reputation and would take a firm stance about associating with products and services displaying explicit material. This risks missing opportunities for funding, market expansion and innovation, as both mainstream brands and serious investors are looking for universal appeal and responsibly managed content.
• User safety, retention and product/service growth - Inadequate or insufficient content moderation or intent to moderate, risks compromising user safety which will lead to a loss of trust and decline in user retention. It will also form a barrier to attract more users who prefer a safe and professional environment. Negative public reaction, particularly from ardent users of products and services from within the Cardano ecosystem, can also lead to long-term reputational damage, hindering overall growth.
• Manual Screening - Manual screening and moderation methods are time-consuming, labour-intensive, subject to human error and biases, and the risks scale proportionally with every new NFT minted on Cardano. Furthermore, there is today, no capability provider within the Cardano ecosystem that is offering the ability to reliably and consistently identify explicit content within NFTs at scale. Our NSFW NFT capability will enable products and services to programmatically identify and deploy their own moderation policies, thus enabling them to maintain a safe and law-abiding space within the Cardano ecosystem.
Solution Design
The proposal aims to deliver a capability that will return NSFW score(s) behind an NFT’s image, specifically, the confidence rating behind the presence of adult content.
It is expected that the end product or service will deploy their own moderation policies and thresholds to take action against the content, for example, by either disallowing the NFT to be displayed on their platform or by displaying a placeholder image/screen indicating the potential presence of explicit content, requiring user approval before proceeding to view the NFT image, or blurring/redacting/censoring the NFT image, or not displaying the NFT image entirely.
Solution Scope & Limitations
NSFW content can be categorised as containing (i) explicit nudity, (ii) suggestive content, (iii) sexual activity, (iv) violent or graphic content, (v) hate speech or symbols, (vi) illegal activities. This proposal aims to make explicit nudity its primary scope for identification. This consequently also means that non-nudity NSFW content (items ii through to vi) will not be covered as a deliverable within this proposal.
We have proposed this approach to keep the requested development budget comparatively small and deliver a Minimum Marketable Product for NFTCDN customers for 6 - 18 months and for us to acquire feedback on the Machine Learning model deployed. Additional screening capabilities will form part of product increments and be subject to future proposals to support development activities.