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By demonizing pleasure, we set ourselves up for unfulfilling sex lives.
Opinion: Let’s talk about sex
Published March 27, 2024

Dirty Facebook? Clean it up with Facewash.

 

“If you wouldn’t want your grandmother seeing it, don’t put it on Facebook,” goes the adage.

Despite the oft-repeated warning, college students are no stranger to red solo cups, sexual innuendos and the (sort of) occasional curse word popping up on their Facebook profiles.

Wanting to help college students salvage their online reputations, three Kent State University undergraduates created a way for them to clean their virtual “faces.”

The service, Facewash, searches through the users Facebook content and activity and pulls up any unsavory content—including statuses, photo captions, comments and liked pages.

The three computer science majors created the application in less than two days while at University of Pennsylvania’s Hackathon, according to the LA Times.

Facewash is geared for college grads looking to vet their profiles in preparation for the leap from parties to the professional world.

"We realized that there's a lot of content that perhaps someone might not want a future employer to see," Daniel Gur, one of the app’s developers, said Wednesday.

After users go to Facewa.sh, log into their Facebook and grant the app permission to their profile, it begins to work its magic.

Using its precompiled list of “dirty” words – related to sex, drugs and cursing – it shows its users posts, pictures and comments with the flagged content and offers them links for easy deletion.

The app, which launched Sunday, has already received more than 20,000 unique visitors.

The trio is looking to expand and add features, as well as fix its current minor glitches (the app is still in beta phase).

According to PC Mag, the app’s biggest drawback is that the search is text-only; for now it can’t flag potentially incriminating pictures.

As for the name, Gur said the metaphor came naturally.

"This is your face on the Internet, and you might need to wash it," he said.

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