alt Hacker NewsFacebook did nothing to assist in narrowing a search area.
What Facebook actually did was host images .. so that after the team narrowed a list down to under 100 people they could look through profiles by hand.
It may as well have been searching Flickr, Instagram, Etsy, etc. profiles by hand.
Yes, and if Facebook didn't exist, presumably these images connecting the abuser to the victim wouldn't have been available anywhere for the investigators to find.