Inappropriate images appear in Zalo messaging app causing stir

On the night of April 11, the Vietnamese online community was stirred up by the appearance of the image of the "yellow flag with three red stripes" right in the animated image (GIF) search section on the Zalo messaging platform.

Specifically, many Zalo users discovered that when typing “@GIF” and entering keywords such as “vn” or a picture of the Vietnamese flag, the series of animated images of the red flag with a yellow star displayed was mixed with a GIF image of the “yellow flag with three red stripes.” The incident immediately sparked a wave of reactions from social media users.

Zalo users can easily search for GIF images of the 'yellow with three red stripes' flag on the app's messaging platform. (Screenshot)

Many indignant opinions have been shared on social networks, saying that the appearance of this image is "unacceptable", seriously affecting the spirit of national solidarity and insulting the heroic history of the Vietnamese people.

The online community is outraged with the Zalo application for letting misleading and offensive images slip through. (Screenshot)

However, according to analysis by technology experts, the controversial GIF images mentioned above are not directly provided by Zalo. In fact, the animated image search function on Zalo is integrated from the Tenor platform - a popular GIF image sharing and searching service globally, currently owned by Google. When users type any keyword in the @GIF section, Zalo will automatically query the animated image database from Tenor and display the appropriate results.

“GIFs on Tenor are created and shared by a global community of users. Policing objectionable content largely depends on the platform’s filtering algorithms and community reporting mechanisms,” said a cybersecurity expert.

Users can easily see the image of the 'yellow flag with three red stripes' appearing on the Zalo messaging app. (Photo: Minh Son/Vietnam+)

As messaging apps continue to expand their multimedia content offerings from stickers, emojis to animated images to enhance user experience, the risk of encountering inappropriate content also increases without effective moderation mechanisms.

In fact, not only Zalo but also Meta's Messenger application has previously encountered the problem of GIF images containing offensive images. Currently, when users access GIF images on this application and type the word "Vietnam", the image of Republic of Vietnam soldiers and "the yellow flag with three red stripes" will still appear.

Image on Facebook Messenger. (Screenshot)

Faced with the incident that is attracting public attention, many people are calling on Zalo to take quick action to filter out inappropriate images from its system, especially during the period when the whole country is looking forward to an important national event.

At the same time, cybersecurity experts also emphasize the role of users in building a civilized online environment. Offensive content and historical distortions need to be reported by users so that platforms can quickly handle them, avoiding the spread of information that causes confusion or harm to the community.

Up to now, Zalo has not had any official response to the incident./.

(Vietnam+)

Source: https://www.vietnamplus.vn/xon-xao-hinh-anh-khong-phu-hop-xuat-hien-trong-ung-dung-nhan-tin-cua-zalo-post1027261.vnp