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Facebook is terrifying

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Re: Facebook is terrifying

#31

Post by libraryatnight »

jdhzzz wrote: post #12
BigChiefSmokem wrote: post #8

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…

The point of this particular article is that you don't even need to be on Facebook. Your image is bound to be captured, perhaps only in the background in a public space, by someone who is. Your face will be recognized and it will become part of your "public record". No amount of opting out will prevent this. Perhaps going full Amish will, but even that simply pushes back the timeline.

"FYI man, alright. You could sit at home, and do like absolutely nothing, and your name goes through like 17 computers a day. 1984? Yeah right, man. That's a typo. Orwell is here now. He's livin' large. We have no names, man. No names. We are nameless!" lol i used to love this quote in Hackers and your point made me recall it.

Re: Facebook is terrifying

#32

Post by drvdevd »

wellpast wrote: 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.

This doesn't really answer your question directly but I find a fun exercise is to take a picture of a face and modify it (clip it, skew, morph, rotate, repeat, etc), and then see at which point Facebook will cease to recognize a face in the image (and then perhaps your face specifically), while you still do.

The real point is that: I believe there are some images in the search space that any recognition algorithm will not see a face in, but which your brain will and vice versa.

Re: Facebook is terrifying

#33

Post by Terribledactyl »

conradev wrote: 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.

They wouldn't have to match globally across their entire dataset. Check your messages before/after landing, maybe post something like "lol, guess I'm going to Madrid". Governments know you flight and boarder activity, financial institutions would know your purchase history.

You've just eliminated a large amount of possible faces.

Re: Facebook is terrifying

#34

Post by elastic_church »

Kiro wrote: post #30
jitbit wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People have been fired or denied employment from "groups" they "liked" way back in the heydays of Facebook.

Very benign things can activate very discretionary things in other people.

Re: Facebook is terrifying

#35

Post by mmjaa »

Its not just faces .. me and a friend had a little jam session recently and posted a picture of our cool little setup, consisting of a few pocket-sized machines (synthesizers and controllers) on our table in front of us. Just an innocent little picture of our jam setup.

Within seconds of posting this picture of the machines, my friend was getting targeted ads from the manufacturers of those devices - within seconds!

This was a watershed moment for us. We won't be posting much to Facebook in the future .. far too scary for us!

Re: Facebook is terrifying

#36

Post by bastawhiz »

What is the proposed recourse? Ban Facebook from analyzing data that users give it? I use Facebook's automatic tagging because I find it useful. Should it be illegal for me to use this feature because someone might unintentionally be identified in a photo that I took? Is the argument that Facebook--or any other company--should never be allowed to develop software that could process data that could identify folks, even when the data was willingly provided by a user that's complying with the law?

I'm not arguing in defense of Facebook, I just don't understand what someone that's privacy-minded would want. If I can legally take a photo, should I not have the right to have a company analyze that photo on my behalf?

Re: Facebook is terrifying

#37

Post by pmoriarty »

jdhzzz wrote: post #12
BigChiefSmokem wrote: post #8

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…

The point of this particular article is that you don't even need to be on Facebook. Your image is bound to be captured, perhaps only in the background in a public space, by someone who is. Your face will be recognized and it will become part of your "public record". No amount of opting out will prevent this. Perhaps going full Amish will, but even that simply pushes back the timeline.

On Facebook and other social media websites, people regularly volunteer to identify their friends in photos.

That does not happen with ordinary street surveillance footage, as far as I know.

So you might have pictures of you taken by street surveillance cameras as you walk around in big cities, but your face isn't ordinarily going to be recognized by anyone.

Re: Facebook is terrifying

#38

Post by Godel_unicode »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #14
BigChiefSmokem wrote: post #8

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…

I personally know several people who got jobs because an acquaintance posted on Facebook.

Re: Facebook is terrifying

#39

Post by jraines »

mmjaa wrote: post #35

Its not just faces .. me and a friend had a little jam session recently and posted a picture of our cool little setup, consisting of a few pocket-sized machines (synthesizers and controllers) on our table in front of us. Just an innocent little picture of our jam setup. Within seconds of posting this picture of the machines, my friend was getting targeted ads from the manufacturers of those devices - within seconds!…

For the sake of discussion, why is that scary rather than kind of nice? Unless you take the AdBlock route, aren't well targeted ads better than irrelevant ones?

Re: Facebook is terrifying

#40

Post by [deleted] »

mmjaa wrote: post #35

Its not just faces .. me and a friend had a little jam session recently and posted a picture of our cool little setup, consisting of a few pocket-sized machines (synthesizers and controllers) on our table in front of us. Just an innocent little picture of our jam setup. Within seconds of posting this picture of the machines, my friend was getting targeted ads from the manufacturers of those devices - within seconds!…

[deleted]
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