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A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

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Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#471

Post by throwaway91111 »

fixermark wrote: post #457
throwaway91111 wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often times i don't give a damn about the content it sponsors. I'd much rather be able to do my business without being assaulted by ads, which often have little to do with reality, and often act as an alienating and dehumanizing force. It's very difficult to see the good. I would rather have no content than ad-supported content. of course, nobody will ever offer that! You can't sell ads if people can opt out, and too…

If you're expecting people to fold their livelihoods instead of sell ads, you may not understand how attached people are to their livelihoods. ;) Meanwhile, there are some inroads into financial support alternatives to ads everywhere. Google has a "contributor" product ( https://contributor.google.com/v/marketing ) where you can basically bid against the ads they'd vend to you; instead of an ad running, you pay a mic…

Oh no, I'm not expecting it to go away.

Frankly, i don't mind google ads; i mind wasting 20 seconds to load a page with about two paragraphs of content and 3mb worth of ads. But this is all ignorig the broader point: why are we basing our revenue off of patterns many realize for being toxic, consumerist, negative-value? People AT GOOGLE will happily admit this while working to build it.

I do my own part by supporting Ad Nauseum[0] and actively punishing sites that serve ads, particularly facebook and google. It's also decent for a (very shallow, for now) layer of noise for your ad profiles. Offer me a flat fee and convince me to spend; don't trick me into viewing ads.

0: https://adnauseam.io

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#472

Post by gglitch »

794CD01 wrote: post #451
metalon wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like strangers taking pictures of you without your consent (and often knowledge) with the intent to increase their profits and not sharing any of that with you.

Ethically, neither your consent or knowledge is required for someone to see you in public and remember that image. Why they do it isn't really relevant. If they use that image to do something unethical, like commit fraud, it is the fraud that is unethical, not the imaging.

Until relatively recently, unavailability of large stockpiles of consumer data (at least, stockpiles at the scale now possible) was a significant impediment to a large and probably mostly-undiscovered class of potentially unethical behavior. Do you not suppose the removal of that impediment, with no other equally powerful compensatory regulations or oversight, to at least potentially be a serious problem now or at any time in the future?

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#473

Post by rhizome »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #117
rhizome wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father had memorized a fake Social Security Number that had come as a sample card in a wallet he got in the 1950s. When anybody except the government asked for his SSN and who wouldn't relent on his pushback, he would give them that number.

How does that work for him for things that do credit checks?

He's been dead for 10 years, but he didn't use it for those. As I remember it, in the 80s-90s it was more common for SSNs to be requested for normal consumer things.

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#474

Post by gglitch »

ffriend wrote: post #397
retube wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're going to have to accept that what you are doing is disliked and considered unethical by the majority.

I'm curious what's the boundary between ethical and unethical. People constantly analyze each other's mood and it's perceived positively. But doing the same thing massively using automated tools is often considered inappropriate. So is it because of using technology, massiveness, purposes? I hope there's a way to make such things both efficient and not unethical.

I think terms of service have something to do with it. In most profiling scenarios, the average consumer has no idea what's going to happen to the data collected on them. I'd be much more comfortable participating in a value-exchange involving your product if I knew precisely what information would be collected, how long it would be stored, who would have access to it during that time frame, what would happen to it at the end of that term, and precisely how that information would be capitalized upon. That probably seems ridiculous to you, but from my perspective, it represents a precise definition of the value I'm yielding to you, and a reasonably precise definition of the risk I'm incurring by doing so.

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#475

Post by ashark »

jstanley wrote: post #287
gedrap wrote: post #285

To be honest, I am fairly surprised at the reaction here on HN. It's not really surprising to see such system, it would be more surprising if such system did not exist because offline ads is a huge business and the technology is here. This goes together with conversion tracking at physical shops, etc. I am equally surprised by the comments about how come engineers implement such systems, how they find it ethical, etc…

It's not surprising that it's possible. It's surprising that it's already happening. It feels straight out of Black Mirror.

Lots of Black Mirror is commentary on where we are now, not where we're going, even if the episode itself is set in future (15 Million Merits is an easy example).

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#476

Post by spangry »

treyfitty wrote: post #366

I've sifted through 80% of the comments here, and I couldn't find a mention about the unintended consequences of this technology. Ethical vs. Unethical, Pro-Privacy vs. Against Privacy are the two common discussion points. I, however, think the bigger problem here is that there's a very non-zero probability that this technology may cause unintended consequences simply by relying on false/inaccurate data. For one, I w…

IMHO, perfect price discrimination is not usually a good thing. It's often discussed more in the context of monopolies. Under simple market models (e.g. no externalities, downward sloping demand curve etc.), a profit-maximising monopolist will set prices above the market clearing prince, resulting in dead-weight loss (market inefficiency).

However, there is one situation where monopolies achieve market-efficiency: when the monopolist can perfectly price-discriminate. This eliminates the dead-weight loss. But, crucially, this also means that all of the gains from trade accrue entirely to the monopolist, as consumers are all paying their own individual 'indifference' prices.

It's a value judgement, but I don't see this as a socially optimal outcome even if it is the market efficient one.

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#477

Post by [deleted] »

rpeden wrote: post #337
_kb wrote: post #15

You'd be surprised / scared / outraged if you knew how common this is. Any time you've been in a public place for the past few years, you've likely been watched, analysed and optimised for. Advertising in the physical world is just as scummy as it's online equivalent. Check out the video here http://sightcorp.com/ for an ultra creepy overview. You can even try their live demo: https://face-api.sightcorp.com/demo_basi…

Indeed. This isn't new. It's everywhere . The cameras retailers use with their surveillance systems are coming with facial recognition built in now. [1] And lots of retailers, banks, etc, are using systems that track people's visits across multiple locations. [2] You'll see a lot of these systems being sold as fraud/loss prevention solutions. The reason for this is that it's a relatively easy sell this way - customer…

[deleted]

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#478

Post by Mz »

[deleted] wrote: post #477
rpeden wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. This isn't new. It's everywhere . The cameras retailers use with their surveillance systems are coming with facial recognition built in now. [1] And lots of retailers, banks, etc, are using systems that track people's visits across multiple locations. [2] You'll see a lot of these systems being sold as fraud/loss prevention solutions. The reason for this is that it's a relatively easy sell this way - customer…

[deleted]

It is HIPAA, not HIPPA. It stands for "Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act."

I get your basic point and I don't disagree that we need more privacy protection. But, no, we do not "need HIPPA" for all personal information.

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#479

Post by white-flame »

_kb wrote: post #342
_kb wrote: post #15

You'd be surprised / scared / outraged if you knew how common this is. Any time you've been in a public place for the past few years, you've likely been watched, analysed and optimised for. Advertising in the physical world is just as scummy as it's online equivalent. Check out the video here http://sightcorp.com/ for an ultra creepy overview. You can even try their live demo: https://face-api.sightcorp.com/demo_basi…

Woah, so this got a bit of interest. To be honest I'm a little surprised this seems to be news to the HN crowd. I feel a little bad about calling out one API provider specifically, so here's a bunch more: https://www.kairos.com/ https://skybiometry.com/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service... http://www.affectiva.com/ http://www.crowdemotion.co.uk/ http://emovu.com/e/ https://www.faceplusplus.…

I've lost track of how many times I've said this on HN:

We need HIPPA for all personal information, not just medical. We have an expectation of privacy in being "lost in the crowd" when we're out and about. Our physical & online whereabouts, who we're physically with, who we're communicating with, our personal contact information, and obviously payment information is private information that can be harmful if not kept private (false positives in automated legal systems, identity theft, and including all the defenses of securing medical information).

Anybody who chooses to hold such information must regard it with a high level of respect and privacy. Since nobody is doing so, and there are no penalties for violating privacy, and this gets into fundamental rights and proper functioning of society, it seems applicable to federal law.

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#480

Post by JauntTrooper »

794CD01 wrote: post #451
metalon wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like strangers taking pictures of you without your consent (and often knowledge) with the intent to increase their profits and not sharing any of that with you.

Ethically, neither your consent or knowledge is required for someone to see you in public and remember that image. Why they do it isn't really relevant. If they use that image to do something unethical, like commit fraud, it is the fraud that is unethical, not the imaging.

I think many people would disagree. It might be legal, but that doesn't mean it's not unethical.

If a stranger on the street started following me, taking pictures without permission, and taking notes about my appearance of actions and storing it in their database, I would say he was behaving unethically.

Ask street photographers - it's a delicate balance. Many people really dislike having their pictures taken without their permission.

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