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Facebook is terrifying

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Re: Facebook is terrifying

#21

I've been using Facebook since college (circa 2005). Never "hidden" my profile from anyone or the public. Never deactivated anything or deleted a post. Recruiters and acquaintances look up my profile all the time. Still, I have never had the data I've given them come back to haunt me. I still trust Facebook leadership very much in this regard. Maybe it's because I trust myself and how I utilize the technology. Or may…

>Still, I have never had the data I've given them come back to haunt me. Are you sure? Facebook has a patent on lowering your credit score based on who is in your friends list[1]. They also feed data to credit score companies who directly examine your posts and use it to tweak your credit score yet further[2]. It's totally possible that your use of Facebook has affected your ability to buy a car or house, or get a jo…

> The lifetime cost of your mortgage could be $20,000 higher than it need be due to your use of Facebook.

Or it could be $20,000 cheaper if you're actually low-risk and their algorithms are better than the status quo...

> Maybe you got passed over for that job that would have been in the perfect place for raising your new child, due to your posting. How would you know?

If you didn't have Facebook, how would you know if you were missing out on opportunities because you've since lost touch with various acquaintances?

Re: Facebook is terrifying

#22
post #6

Anyone know this technology well enough to know if sunglasses and a scarf of some sort would prevent my being recognized if not making me look somewhat silly or suspicious.

> Anyone know ... if sunglasses and a scarf of some sort would prevent my being recognized

Not really, it's a classic example (at least, one I've seen several times) to show recognition even when obscured.

That said, I just searched for an example, and found this paper [0] claiming highly effective tortoiseshell glasses to block recognition or deceive to be another. Though it certainly doesn't satisfy your other requirement of:

> not making me look somewhat silly

[0] - https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sbhagava/papers/face-rec-ccs16.pdf

Re: Facebook is terrifying

#23
post #13
post #9

It's not just Facebook. As more images become publicly accessible on the internet, that capability will be available to many organizations and individuals. If that scares you, you should think about how we can protect ourselves from tyranny without anonymity.

I wonder what will happen when it becomes possible to search the entire corpus of nude selfies on the whole internet, by name.

Last year facial recognition was used [1] to out porn stars in Russia. Today Google Image Search will return real names (or alleged real names in cases of mistaken identity) for many selfies of people who were doxxed at some point. We're not that far from this.

[1] https://advox.globalvoices.org/2016/04/22/facial-recognition...

Re: Facebook is terrifying

#24
post #4
post #2

Would Facebook's facial recognition work as well in an airport or train station scenario? It is definitely an easier problem to recognize one face out of a few hundred or few thousand (your friends) than it is to globally match across their entire database.

Well, considering all the computing power they have (more than 100k servers across dozens of datacenters - and that data is from 2010) this is not a problem. Hell, they can even quickly detect copyright infringement a posted video right? Ever posted a video with some background music? I don't think computing power is a problem...

The problem isn't computing power, it's algorithm accuracy. If there are thousands of people who are a close-enough match to your face, then when they see your face in a random crowd at a train station, they don't know which of those people you are.

To fix this they'd probably need other heuristics, which for all I know they're already using. An easy one would be to narrow it down by location, though sometimes that'd be wrong. A more sophisticated method would be to build a model of human movement, keep track of locations where they have high confidence it's you (e.g. in pics of you in small groups with your friends) and combine these into an estimate of the probability of each candidate match being at the train station.

Re: Facebook is terrifying

#25

Would it be possible to provide a link to your public FB profile? EDIT: Nevermind, found it: https://m.facebook.com/BigChiefSmoke EDIT-2: https://pipl.com/search/?q=BigChiefSmokem EDIT-N: You start asking why I would post everything I am able to find on you (and anyone you know) and ask me to stop; or at least that is what the average person would do.

Nevermind facebook, that website is terrifying.

Re: Facebook is terrifying

#26

> Even if you’re extremely cautious, even if you never post anything on Facebook, even if you have “location services” disabled on your phone at all times etc. etc. Facebook still knows where you are. You can’t stop other people from taking selfies in an airport. This seems a bit over the top. What are the odds I'll end up in the background of someone's selfie that they post on Facebook? I imagine the chances are inc…

> What are the odds I'll end up in the background of someone's selfie that they post on Facebook

Uh, pretty high? Depending where you live, I suppose.

I frequently find myself in front of someone seemingly 'selfy-ing', and always feel slightly uncomfortable since it looks exactly as if they're taking an ordinary photograph of me.

I'd have only to be behind instead of in front of them in order to be in their 'selfie' (assuming that is what they're doing!) - and I'd have thought that would happen even more often than being in front, assuming some of them feel just a modicum of embarrassment at the ridiculousness of the activity.

Re: Facebook is terrifying

#27
post #11

I've been using Facebook since college (circa 2005). Never "hidden" my profile from anyone or the public. Never deactivated anything or deleted a post. Recruiters and acquaintances look up my profile all the time. Still, I have never had the data I've given them come back to haunt me. I still trust Facebook leadership very much in this regard. Maybe it's because I trust myself and how I utilize the technology. Or may…

Yeah, I always get annoyed at standing in line for building security needing to take yet another photo of me and stare at my license. Let's just be friends on Facebook so their security cameras can identify me when I walk in the door.

I honestly can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.

Re: Facebook is terrifying

#30
post #15

I've been using Facebook since college (circa 2005). Never "hidden" my profile from anyone or the public. Never deactivated anything or deleted a post. Recruiters and acquaintances look up my profile all the time. Still, I have never had the data I've given them come back to haunt me. I still trust Facebook leadership very much in this regard. Maybe it's because I trust myself and how I utilize the technology. Or may…

That age old "I have nothing to hide" argument. AKA "they're nice people, what could go wrong". This is not the point. The point is: Information in the wrong hands can become dangerous , period. People change. Companies change. You have no guarantee Facebook will preserve the vision they have right now. You have no guarantee their new CEO won't have a different opinion... (wont be a "Trump"). Also you have to realize…

Not OP but even if the next Hitler would get all my Facebook data I still don't care personally. Am I naive? I do understand why people have a problem with it though.
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