“What if someone just has a really phallic-looking face?” This is the question I found myself asking Airtime founder Sean Parker, a man who coincidentally turned out to be my very first Airtime chatmate.
Airtime is a platform that makes it dead-simple for people to video chat with their friends or with people that
share their interests online. While its easy to compare the service with Chatroulette, Airtime has more to offer users.
And unlike Chatroulette, Airtime promises to protect us from being inundated by a barrage of penises. Thanks
Still, many of us have wondered how this algorithm works. Logging into Airtime for the first time, I was a bit hesitant after all, I know what happened all-too often on Chatroulette.
Instead, I found myself face-to-face with Airtime creator Sean Parker (Andrew Ross Sorkin from The New York Times was also with him in person), giving me the opportunity to ask the him directly about how Airtime’s safety filters work.
Keeping Users Safe
From what I can understand, Airtime’s safety processes aren’t dissimilar to some of the face and behavior detection software that casinos use to try to catch known card counters.
During a “matched call” that is, a call taking place between two people that aren’t friends on either
Facebook or Airtime already Airtime takes periodic screenshots of the chats to monitor for inappropriate conduct.
It turns out, there are common behaviors with inappropriate chat. On Chatroulette, users used to “penis bomb” others by quickly moving the web camera from a user’s face to its crotch.
Parker explained to me that certain objects can appear to be other things a waving finger, for example, if often falsely identified as a penis. For that reason, fingers aren’t part of the scanning algorithm.
Airtime can detect those types of quick movement changes. Moreover, if there is a certain hand gesture or movement taking place on screen, that’s the type of behavior that can be flagged for a closer look.
At this stage, actual humans can monitor the screenshots and if they see inappropriate behavior in a matched call, the user will immediately be banned from the service.
Airtime details its safety process in more clear language on its blog, emphasizing that only matched chats are randomly scanned and reviewed against an algorithm. Two friends on Facebook or Airtime chatting is a strictly private affair.
Because of this one-strike you’re out policy, testing the accuracy of Airtime when it comes to inappropriate
behavior is more difficult than it appears.
From my brief chat with Parker, however, I’m more convinced that this combination of computer pattern detectors and human eyes will lead to a penis-free experience.
And if you do actually have a phallic-looking face rest assured that the human eyes on Airtime matches won’t mistake you for something else.
