The document, Voluntary Principles to Counter Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, includes 11 principles. It covers themes like targeting online grooming, preventing searches of child sexual abuse material and responding to evolving threats. According to a statement published by the DOJ, the principles are “intended to have sufficient flexibility to ensure effective implementation.”

“We hope the Voluntary Principles will spur collective action on the part of industry to stop one of the most horrendous crimes impacting some of the most vulnerable members of society,” said US Attorney General William Barr.

Many tech companies already have at least some measures to combat child exploitation. Recently, Facebook made its algorithms for flagging harmful photos and videos open-source and available on GitHub. Microsoft has shared its tool for reviewing chat-based conversations and detecting online grooming. Still, online child exploitation is a widespread and devastating problem.

Currently, when Facebook finds offensive photos and videos, it removes them and its algorithms assign a hash, or a digital fingerprint. Its technology can then use those hashes to determine whether two files are the same or similar, even without the original image or video. So when multiple copies of, say, terrorist videos appear online, Facebook has a better chance of spotting them.

These algorithms, known as PDQ and TMK+PDQF, will now be available to Facebook’s industry partners, smaller developers and nonprofits. The first, PDQ is a photo-matching tool that was inspired by pHash but built from the ground up. The second, TMK+PDQF is the video-matching equivalent, and it was developed by Facebook’s AI Research team and the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in Italy. For those who already use content matching technology, Facebook says PDQ and TMK+PDQF can offer another layer of defense and allow different hash-sharing systems to talk to each other.

Facebook announced the open-source tools as part of its Child Safety Hackathon, and it’s specifically hoping the technology might help safeguard children. It could be used in conjunction with Microsoft’s cloud-based PhotoDNA tool and Google’s Content Safety API — both of which were released with the goal of protecting kids. After the discovery of an alleged child pornography ring on YouTube earlier this year, tools like these may be more important than ever.